A HAPPY GHOST

A young man bemoans his stagnant life and struggles to make sense of the world around him in Flores’ novel.

The author limns the scattershot life of young Andrei, a chronically depressed, easily annoyed, contemplative Beverly Hills hotel clerk who grasps at personal bliss and meaningful change and who winds up mostly empty-handed. He divulges that he makes a generous salary and lives in an attractive apartment, but he sleeps on a futon mattress on a floor that “smelled of earth and mushroom” and angles to give people the impression that he actually went to college by wearing a UCLA hoodie. He admits to becoming “numb to life,” having lost interest in the things that used to make him happy. Every pleasure has become negated by its own predictability, he laments; video games, pornography, writing—nothing holds the allure it once did. His boredom is disrupted when he’s discovered pleasuring himself inside an unoccupied suite while listening to the neighboring room’s occupants having sex. He is caught by an incoming guest named Mars, a beautiful, wise, intuitive actress who, after a probing discussion, wholly captivates Andrei—to the point that he begins stalking her after his shifts.

For a shorter novel, Flores manages to economically convey a great amount of opinionated perspective, emotion, and dark, self-effacing humor. His skill is most evident in his masterfully imagined creation, the disillusioned, navel-gazing Andrei, alongside a busy cast of peripheral characters and a few particularly persnickety hotel guests: the male hotel floor manager who wears copious eyeliner and blush, the crying, aging woman “with marks of two dried rivers on her face,” and a host of others. All of these wacky personalities, highlighted in their brief interactions with the protagonist, collectively threaten to steal the show as they either enhance his life or inadvertently (and often comically) contribute to his continual state of misery. As the location of each chapter changes, so does the reader’s perspective on how Andrei is coping (or not) with the challenges set forth in his life. The story’s shifting settings, from bedroom to cafe to hospital to cemetery, are less jarring than they are enticing and exciting; these atmospheric variations lend the novel a sense of surprise. While the inclusion of spicy, explicit sex scenes may be off-putting to more sensitive readers, they humanize Andrei and flesh him out as a human being with needs and wants outside of more mundane, everyday desires—despite his opinion that sex is “disappointingly unidimensional.” Sprinkled among descriptions of Andrei’s antics are passages of protracted introspection and often pessimistic contemplation of life, human nature, his attraction to the opposite sex, and the eternal quest for happiness, all of which contribute to the story’s inward-facing perspective—and disappointingly sluggish pacing. Despite the vivid intensity with which Flores portrays Andrei’s interactions with Mars, the novel leaves this memorable relationship unresolved. In spite of these quibbles, the ride is a hoot, and readers will find themselves speculating about what Andrei does next or what agonizing new ordeal awaits him. That unpredictability is the best part of this novel.

The humorous, ponderous misadventures of this malcontent are a lot of fun.