OTHER LIVES

A mother is determined to find out what is haunting her child and why.

Until the age of six, Charlie was a normal, fun-loving kid. Then he began acting strangely, adopting a completely different personality, entering trance-like states, knowing things about his parents without ever having been told and experiencing terrible visions and nightmares of people suffering great pain. While his father, David, is embarrassed by Charlie’s behavior and refuses to deal with it, his mother, Karen, secretly takes him to a parapsychologist, who suggests that Charlie is reliving events from someone else’s life. Karen suspects that Charlie is revisiting the life of Alex, David’s first son, who was killed in a car accident more than ten years earlier. Desperate to end Charlie’s torment, she begins to delve into her husband’s past. She visits the houses David lived in with Alex and his first wife, looking for specific clues that Charlie mentions while under hypnotic regression. Along the way, this erstwhile stay-at-home mom sneaks into a medical-records department, impersonates a bank auditor and attempts to find her way out of a cocaine-dealing biker’s locked basement. Ultimately, she discovers not only what is troubling her son, but some dark secrets about her husband as well. Though the story begins as a somewhat chilling, Sixth Sense–like thriller, the heroine eventually becomes involved in situations more comical than genuinely frightening, in scenes that feature increasingly sado-masochistic undertones. Readers drawn in by the quiet, effective spookiness may be disappointed by the sordid conclusion. Though certain plot twists strain the boundaries of credulity, they keep the pages turning.

A mildly effective demonstration of why the things that go bump in the night aren’t nearly as bad as the skeletons in the closet.