A Reunion of Ghosts : A Novel
Author(s): Judith Claire Mitchell
A NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FINALIST
“The Alter sisters are mordant, wry, and crystalline in wit and vision; it is a tremendous pleasure to rocket through generations of their family histories with them.” —Lauren Groff, New York Timesbestselling author of Fates and Furies, The Monsters of Templeton, and Arcadia
In the waning days of 1999, the last of the Alters—three damaged but wisecracking sisters who share an apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side—decide it’s time to close the circle of the family curse by taking their own lives. But first, Lady, Vee, and Delph must explain the origins of that curse and how it has manifested throughout the preceding generations. Unspooling threads of history, personal memory, and family lore, they weave a mesmerizing account that stretches back a century to their great-grandfather, a brilliant scientist whose professional triumph became the terrible legacy that defines them. A suicide note crafted by three bright, funny women, A Reunion of Ghosts is the final chapter of a saga lifetimes in the making—one that is inexorably intertwined with the story of the twentieth century itself.
“Mitchell explores the mixed-blessing bonds of family with wry wit. This original tale is black comedy at its best.”—People Book of the Week
“A rich portrait of a complicated family, at turns violent and hilarious.”—Emma Straub, New York Timesbestselling author
Review(s):
“This is a triumphant, beautiful, and devastating novel about coincidences, family, and the sins of our fathers.”
“Judith Claire Mitchell understands what’s at the marrow of our funny bones: that humor lives in darkness, that our families are our curses and our blessings, that great pain can beget great warmth and love.”
“A rich portrait of a complicated family, at turns violent and hilarious, shot through with love and death and the scars that reappear generation after generation.”
“Mitchell explores the mixed-blessing bonds of family with wry wit. This original tale is black comedy at its best.”
“A Reunion of Ghosts is a darkly comic, multigenerational meditation on a family curse.… [It] balances gallows humor with the seriousness of the sisters’ history and is a memorable and meticulous exploration of personal responsibility and borrowed guilt.”
“Judith Claire Mitchell’s splendidly dark and comic novel A Reunion of Ghosts. . . is a very funny book but it is also tender, sombre and thought-provoking.”
“What’s so funny about three sisters bent on committing suicide? Plenty, in the imagination of Judith Claire Mitchell…. Darkly witty.”
“Mitchell’s plot, which twists in unexpected but believable ways and opens up just when it seems as if it can only close in, is thoroughly satisfying, but it’s the tone of her novel—that ability to savor joy and sorrow at the same time—that makes it remarkable.”
“The novel is written like a long, group suicide note filled with personal and family revelations—brutally funny ones.”
“Mitchell’s triumphant second novel explores love, identity, and the burdens of history in coruscating, darkly comic prose…. Moving nimbly through time and balancing her weightier themes with the sharply funny, fiercely unsentimental perspectives of her three protagonists… [it] is poignant and pulsing with life force.”
ISBN: 9780062355881