MOZART’S GHOST

Ghost meets girl…girl meets boy…boy irritates girl…ghost intervenes…boy gets girl.

At the age of 32, Anna changes her status from spinster to desirable single by the simple expedient of moving from Michigan to New York City. In the most exciting metropolis in the world, she works by day as a teacher but at night gives rein to her true talent: talking to ghosts. She’s been doing it since she was five, and as a medium Anna enables the curious and/or suffering living to converse with their departed loved ones. The “other side” should be treated “as a large and unwieldy kindergarten class,” she learned from her childhood mentor; spirits can be just as stubborn and wrongheaded in death as they were in life. Another potentially disruptive force is Edward, an aspiring concert pianist who moves into the apartment below hers and practices for an upcoming competition at untoward hours. He’s charming but goofy and totally dedicated to his art. It will be obvious to anyone familiar with the course of true love (and commercial fiction) that this couple is destined to get together. When Edward begins to court Anna, however, she’s reluctant to tell him about her vocation, fearing he might be frightened away by her weird abilities. The plot congeals rather than thickens with the introduction of Mozart’s ghost, who wants to make sure (in heavily German-accented English) that Edward masters the tricky passages in the sonata he’s been practicing. Cameron, best known for The Artist’s Way nonfiction series (Finding Water, 2006, etc.), treats her heroine’s gift with matter-of-fact humor; it’s just something Anna does, like cooking or knitting.

Agreeable light entertainment.