POLLY'S GHOST

An odd, lyrical tale from Frucht (Life Before Death, 1997, etc.) of a mother’s ghost and the lives she tends in her 30-odd years roaming the astral plans. Disembodied though fully conscious, Polly narrates her life-after-death, which is less about her life than the observation of everybody else’s. After having given birth to three sets of twins, the charmingly irrepressible Polly dies in childbirth before ever seeing her single son, Tip, and so becomes his guardian in death. When Tip is nine, camping with next door neighbor Johnny—not yet friends, not yet enemies—Polly wishes for something to fall from the sky, an event to bind the boys, giving Tip a twin by proxy, to ease the loneliness she feels she’s burdened him with. She’s thinking of a falling star, but it’s Tom Bane’s airplane that falls from the sky into the lake, creating a vengeful ghost out of Tom, who subliminally needs to punish Polly’s kin, and setting off a chain of events that shape her son’s life. Dancing in and out of the consciousness of others, Polly “visits” Tom Bane’s wife, Angie; his daughter, Honey; and Johnny’s mother, Gwen. But it’s Tip she is trying to make her way to. Slowly, all these lives begin to converge, making a strong case for the concept of destiny, or at least for the power of ghostly interference. Inheriting his mother’s charismatic glow, Tip grows into a happy Lothario, Honey into the paragon of independence, while Johnny, lured into the water by Tom Bane’s liquid bitterness, drowns, leaving Tip alone again. The narrative’s forward thrust occasionally lags, suggesting a short-story cycle, but the detours are always beautifully imagined, redeeming the slow pace of Polly’s eternity. The final, non-astral meeting is not so much a surprise as a welcome conclusion. A gentle foray into the infinite strength of love.