From the TBR Pile: Blog Tour: A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell

Author: Judith Claire Mitchell

Publisher: Harper

Date of publication: March 2015

Three wickedly funny sisters.

One family’s extraordinary legacy.

A single suicide note that spans a century …

Meet the Alter sisters: Lady, Vee, and Delph. These three mordantly witty, complex women share their family’s apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. They love each other fiercely, but being an Alter isn’t easy. Bad luck is in their genes, passed down through the generations. Yet no matter what curves life throws at these siblings—and it’s hurled plenty—they always have a wisecrack, and one another.

In the waning days of 1999, the trio decides it’s time to close the circle of the Alter curse. But first, as the world counts down to the dawn of a new millennium, Lady, Vee, and Delph must write the final chapter of a saga lifetimes in the making—one that is inexorably intertwined with that of the twentieth century itself. Unspooling threads of history, personal memory, and family lore, they weave a mesmerizing account of their lives that stretches back decades to their great-grandfather, a brilliant scientist whose professional triumph became the sinister legacy that defines them.

When I read the synopsis for A Reunion of Ghosts, I was sure I would like this book. The idea of three sisters who make a suicide pact and write their family history as a suicide note was intriguing.
You know we always keep it real here on this blog, so here's the deal. I didn't care for this book. I stopped reading about about 20% of the way into it. Once again, I find myself in the minority.

I found the book dull and kind of depressing. The book is described as funny and heartbreaking. I found nothing funny about it. The story starts out with the three sisters writing as one but then switch back and forth to seemingly random moments in history. I didn't like that format as I found it disorienting. For example, the sisters are describing the first time Lady tries to commit suicide, but it take ages to get the story out because we get a family history lesson smack in the middle. It just didn't work for me.

As I said, I am in the minority. Plenty of people are raving about the book, So I recommend giving it a try, Maybe you'll like it more than me,

About the auithor:

Judith Claire Mitchell, author of the novelThe Last Day of the War, is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she directs the MFA program in creative writing. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Judy has received fellowships from the James A. Michener/Copernicus Society, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, with her husband, the artist Don Friedlich.

Find out more about Judith at her website, and connect with her on Facebook.

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