Customer Reviews

Puccini's Ghosts

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

An unhappy middle-aged woman, estranged from her family, goes home after many years for her father's funeral. While putting his effects in order, she recalls the long-ago summer of 1960, when she was a reckless, dreamy 15-year-old. Piece by piece, memory by memory, we witness the devastating series of events that destroyed her and her world.

This is my favorite kind of mystery--a psychological suspense story of the heart and mind. The main character, Liza, is a vivid creation, and her family is unforgettable. PUCCINI'S GHOSTS is a haunting, heartbreaking, peculiarly British tale in the style of Ruth Rendell and Minette Walters, by one of the best new voices in mystery fiction. (Her previous novel, HALF BROKEN THINGS, is also excellent.)

Retired opera chorister, Lila DuCann, returns to her home town to bury her father, after an absence of many years. The unexpected grief she experiences causes her mind to slip back and forth between the present time and the time when, as a 15 year old, she took part in what was to be a local production of Puccini's opera, Turandot. Her uncle George conceived the crazy plan of producing the opera in a large, local barn, using untrained locals as singers and musicians, with Lila's mother Fleur, a former small time singer, in the lead role and Lila in the secondary female role. Fleur, always an unstable wannabe, sees herself as an undiscovered diva and behaves accordingly, while Lila discovers that she has an undiscovered talent as a soprano. Geoge introduces Joe, a friend from London, as the male lead, who immediately becomes the object of Lila's first major crush. The ensuing fiasco highlights the entire family's terrible unhappiness, and results in tragedy and misery all around. It's not a happy book but is certainly a brilliant piece of writing.

Morag Joss's previous novel, Half Broken Things, was a well-written, entertaining psychologic thriller from the alternating perspectives of an omniscient narrator and the primary protagonist. In that book, the protagonist was an elderly woman with significant emotional trauma from her childhood which was gradually revealed through the book.

In Puccini's Ghosts, the protagonist is an elderly woman with significant emotional trauma from her childhood which is gradually revealed through the book. In a nearly identical fashion to the previous book, chapters alternate - including changes in font - from the present to the past and change from the protagonist's viewpoint to that of an omniscient narrator. In this story, the climax is significantly less compelling than in the previous book, and the prior trauma is likewise less attention-getting. While the prose is excellently written and entertaining, the literary device is identical to the previous novel while the novel itself is much less worthy. If you simply enjoy this type of novel, then it won't be a waste of time to read it, but if you're looking for something compelling and markedly different than the prior novel, this isn't it.

i found this book to be very well written and i think the author did a great job of evoking a creepy, sad and dysfunctional mood. usually that works for me, but i couldn't wait for the book to end. i think the only reason i finished it was to find out what horrible thing befell the family, b/c it was clear something did. there was such buildup, i suppose the ending couldn't help but be a disappointment. also, i found the style to be mostly introspective, and that became wearying after awhile.

When her father dies, retired opera chorister, Lila DuCann, returns to her hometown Burnhead, Scotland to attend his funeral. She has been away from the town for years and has not seen her dad in a long time. Thus when she grieves her loss she is taken aback as memories of 1960, the fateful "Turandot Summer" when she was fifteen years old, flow freely.

Her lunatic thirtyish Uncle George Pettifer, a London music teacher, obstinately decides to direct a local production of Puccini's opera Turandot starring Lila's mom Florence "Fleur" Duncan as the title character and Lila in the support female role as slave girl Liu. Local amateur musicians and singers round out the cast. Thus only Fleur had any real experience and she never moved far up the singer's food chain. However Fleur felt she was just one song from being discovered and being treated like a pampered adored Prima Donna. To provide some quality, George brings his London friend Joe Foscari to serve as the male lead. Lila falls in love her first crush, but the failed presentation only highlighted the flop of her family leading to a tragedy and a teen in exile from her home.

PUCCINI'S GHOSTS is a terrific drama that grips readers as they wonder what happened in the summer of 1960 that destroyed a family. As Lila tells the tale from her perspective looking back to when she was a teen, fans will soon wonder whether she can delineate reality from a fantasy created perhaps out of FEARFUL SYMMETRY of what is truth. Morag Joss provides a virtuoso performance (sans Sara Selkirk) with the attendees listening to FUNERAL MUSIC and knowing first hand about dreams of HALF BROKEN THINGS.

Harriet Klausner

First, it should be noted that this story is neither a mystery nor a thriller. It is a somewhat gothic coming-of-age novel centering on the young protagonist and her wildly dysfunctional family. The narration shifts from chapter to chapter between the memories of the late middle-aged Lila home to bury her father, and the 15 y/o Lila living out the events at the heart of the novel. After her labile and indifferent mother has a "breakdown", the mother's brother, Uncle George, comes from London to stay, to settle her down. He impulsively decides to organize an amateur production of the opera "Turandot" to showcase her operatic skills, and those of Lila. He invites his 20 y/o friend Joe up from London to sing the male lead. Lila, desparate to escape her dreary life in a small Scottish town, immediately falls for Joe and spends the bulk of the novel fantasizing about their future life together. (SPOILER ALERT) It's immediately obvious that there's more going on between George and Joe than a mutual love of music, and we know early on where this will lead for poor Lila. When the inevitable finally occurs, Lila ends up destroying the lives of all concerned in a dramatic outburst. The only real suspense in this novel is how long it will take Lila to figure things out. Regrettably for the reader, this takes several hundred pages. Buried in this novel is an excellent short story, or a good novella.

I am so glad I didn't read the Booklist review (above) of this romp before reading the book... why do "reviewers" feel they have to spill the beans on plot points? And in this case, the information is not only disturbing, one key point it is actually wrong. The book is fun and it helps to be listening to Turandot while reading. In parts, it is downright hilarious, dangerous to read in public.

I read Joss just for the descriptions. Really, they are so fraught. Her language elevates the genre. Take, for example, this passage from pp. 52-53 of PUCCINI'S GHOSTS:

"He lies in a coffin in a room without windows. There are more chairs and acryclic flowers and bibles, but I don't take in any more detail than that. It's cold. The air conditioning makes distant, electrical lapping sounds and in the glowing yellow light everything in the room looks buttered. I want to see his hands. One rests over the other across his torso and they look hard and waxy now, but I know them. I saw them lift teacups, wash carrots under the garden tap, but the surprising trust I feel about these hands means, I suppose, that they must also have spooned food into me, picked me up after falling, tidied my fringe out of my eyes, though I do not remember."

Bravo, Morag Joss.

Like watching an old nag plodding through a field. The characters are unlikeable; the plot just made me tired.