MADELEINE'S GHOST

Corrupted Creole civility complicates the life of a Brooklyn bohemian—in a spirited debut deftly mingling past, present, and the vastly different worldviews of New Orleans and New York. Ned Conti is a 32-year-old graduate student down and out in New York, passing time in East Village bars, avoiding work on his dissertation, and still mending from a disastrous love affair broken off ten years before. Adding insult to injury is a ghost in his dingy Brooklyn apartment: Furniture moves, stones fall from the ceiling, and he catches glimpses of a former time and inhabitant. A fruitless job researching a locally venerated 19th-century nun for his parish priest, who presides over her mummified remains and hopes to give Brooklyn its first saint, does little to improve Ned's state of mind. And when a Gypsy friend conducts a sÇance in order to get to the bottom of his ghost problem, but something goes awry and she jumps into the East River, he finds he's touching bottom himself. Then he's mugged and pistol-whipped. Meanwhile, his ex-amour, raven-haired New Orleans belle Antoinette, phones out of the blue to invite him to her family's bayou gathering, and in a speed-freaking, fast-lane frenzy the two pick up where they left off—for a few days. Back in Brooklyn, drained and thoroughly bewildered, Ned finally discovers the truth about the nun, his ghost, and Antoinette—though it'll takes hallucinations, an unauthorized visit to the mummy's crypt, and a near-death experience to provide missing links. Forsaking the city of dreams and despair once and for all, Ned lives happily ever after with Antoinette in the city where he truly belongs. The romance in Girardi's first novel has an undeniable sappiness, but entrancing scenes and characters, exquisite timing, and a mausoleum full of plot twists make for a fluid and truly memorable delight.