Tuesday Mooney Talks To Ghosts: An Adventure

Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts is one of my favorite reads this year. The story is filled with wonderful descriptive narratives. The characters are quirky, complex and delicious. Tuesday Mooney lost a great friend in her teens. However the friend never really left. Her ghostly familiar always had an opinion and never shuts up, which drives Tuesday crazy. Could the friendly ghost be trying to help her out in some way? Tuesday does not play well with others. It is a good thing she is a project researcher – a job that does not require too much interaction with her coworkers. She has no friends per say, except other misfits to console with. A haunted house and the chance for adventure awaits Tuesday. A mysterious rich man, Pryce, recently died and wanted to challenge the living. He created clues with the promise of treasure if they could be solved. His challenge went out to the general public. And so the game begins. Mr. Pryce has a lesson to teach humanity. Will the challengers learn their lesson? Look for the table of lost souls and which people are playing parts. I highly recommend this book to all. It is both entertaining and soul searching.

At times, especially in the beginning, the whole theme, characters, storyline, comes across a bit high schoolish, rather than an adult life demeanour. A few chapters in, and I seriously thought I wouldn't be able to finish this. The more I persisted, the more I found myself entertained with the book. It started to fan out and loss that edge of immaturity I originally picked up on. I have to say by the end of the book, it goes a little deeper than it initially appears on the surface. Makes you realize how many people, ourselves included, proceed through daily life, hiding our true nature, and not accepting what's right there all along. For a lot, just as Tuesday, and her pre-adolescent neighbor find, it's only once we lose someone through death, or even other ways, that we begin to know life is for the living. Unfortunately for many it can take a lifetime before this realization comes to light. We also tend to parade around in character, rather than letting others get to know the true us. In my humble opinion, I think this has to do more with not loving, or believing in, ourselves enough. If I can't love, accept, embrace, the real me, than how can I expect anyone else to want to? Instead we hide behind closed doors, real and metaphorical. The life lesson of being willing to relinquish what hasn't worked in the past, by opening up, putting ourselves out there as the real you, with all of our vulnerabilities is scary. It comes with the possible price of pain, rejection, and…

I started reading this book, about a scavenger hunt through Boston, right before I traveled to Boston myself, and I'm so glad I did! I enjoyed recognizing places I'd researched and then got to experience for myself. I rode the T a lot while there and loved being able to see these places for real. I also visited Salem and Derby Wharf and walked out to the small lighthouse, where Tuesday's best friend disappeared, likely drowned, when they were sixteen. I visited Essex Street a few times and could definitely picture her parents having a shop there. As for the story itself, I found it enjoyable. I loved the Poe references in the scavenger hunt clues and I liked how all of the characters came together to contribute something to the search. The title of the book refers to how Tuesday hears the voice of her missing best friend in her head, which makes her believe that Abby truly is dead. Abby comments on Tuesday's life and it's easy to assume that this is Tuesday's reaction to dealing with the sudden death of Vincent Pryce at the hospital auction in the beginning of the book. She managed to suppress Abby's voice for years, but now it has returned. But is it really a figment of Tuesday's imagination? Or are ghosts real? This is for the reader to decide for themselves.

I think Racculia is a little too in love with her prose and ideas, because this book is dense. It is overflowing with useless anecdotes, asides and descriptions that make it difficult to follow what is actually happening in the plot. This can be said of all of the author's books, but is still true for Tuesday Mooney Talks to Ghosts. It's a clever enough mystery, but it's just too bogged down with exposition to be invested in the story and the mystery. I felt like I was slogging through the first 90% of the story and then rushed through the last 10 towards the conclusion with a heavy hand of deus ex machina to help it all come to fruition; in my opinion contrivances are getting characters into situations, not out of them. It's fine. It's OK. It passes the time (at nearly 400 pages of eye-drying detail) but needs an editor desperately. If you like books that are the literary equivalent of poutine then this is for you.

This is the second Kate Racculia book I’ve read, and she’s impressed me both times. This is a wonderful, mysterious story with some of the best characters I’ve encountered in a long time. I’ll be recommending this to everyone.