GHOST FISH

A young woman misses her late sister, now a ghost floating in a pickle jar.

Pennebaker’s debut novel opens like a stock big-city bildungsroman: The narrator, 23-year-old Alison, has arrived in New York from Georgia, where her grandmother, mother, and sister have all died separately but in quick succession. The last, an accidental drowning during a beachside party, hits the hardest, but Alison is determined to start over, taking a job as a host at a Manhattan hotel restaurant, going to parties, and flirting with a young hedge fund employee. But the past tugs at her emotionally and then physically—the sister’s ghost appears at her apartment in the form of a fish Alison keeps alive in a water-filled pickle jar. Though the ghost never speaks, it serves as Alison’s conscience and confessor when dates with the hedge fund bro go sideways, her friendship with a co-worker deepens, and her loneliness intensifies. (“I was our family’s only remnant.”) Pennebaker is a savvy observer of a restaurant’s peculiar workplace dynamic and, later in the novel, of the culture of Key West, Florida, which is at once oppressively touristy and inspiring. But the novel’s metaphysical elements feel like a mild layer of strangeness applied to a story of everyday 20-something concerns: Is this person worth dating? Should I stay in the big, expensive city? Who are my real friends? How much did my past shape me? Sally Rooney gives such questions depth by virtue of philosophical savvy and a willingness to drill deep into her characters’ flaws. Here, the conflicts don’t feel nearly as high-stakes, and the reliance on a ghost story feels more like a narrative gimmick than a window into Alison’s soul.

An earnest, mildly offbeat girl-meets-city tale.