May 4, 2010
BOOK REVIEW: Laurie Notaro's 'Spooky Little Girl' Makes a Great Beach Book -- If You Aren't Staying at a Haunted B&B!
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Haven't had enough shivers up and down your spine watching "Ghost Town," "Ghost," "Death Becomes Her"? Why not try Laurie Notaro's "Spooky Little Girl" (Villard Trade Paperback Original, an imprint of Random House, 304 pages, $14.00).
Dental technician Lucy Fisher wants to celebrate the end of being single eight weeks before her wedding to Martin, a supermarket produce manager, so she rounds up her two best friends, Jilly and Marianne, co-workers at the Dr. Meadows dental practice where all three toil, and off they go to Hawaii. The vacation is a disappointment and the return to Phoenix is even more so when Lucy finds all her belongings tossed out on the front lawn and in the bed of her pickup truck. The locks of the house she shares with Martin have been changed and Martin doesn't respond to repeated knocks at the front door.
On top of all this, she's lost her job, accused (falsely, it turns out) of neglecting to deposit a hefty amount of money and checks before leaving on her vacation. I was reminded of the opening of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", set in late 1950s Phoenix, with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) absconding with her boss's cash.
Lucy leaves her beloved dog Tulip and many of her belongings with Jilly and drives north up Interstate 17 to her sister Alice's home in Flagstaff, the only place she can think of staying now that she's out both funds and work.
Alice is surrounded by troubles, too, with her cheating husband gone, trying to raise her son Jared on a meager income and -- the latest unkind cut -- being unable to start her car. Lucy lends Alice her truck and makes her way to to the unemployment office near the courthouse. That's where Lucy joins the ranks of the "Surprised Demised" or -- as they're officially called Sudden Death (SD) -- when she is momentarily distracted and is flattened by a city bus.
Lucy Fisher sudden discovers that death is what happens while you're busy making other plans when she meets Ruby, the instructor in SD Room 1118 and her fellow surprisees.
Ruby runs what is essentially a boot camp for the newly dead, where Lucy and her fellow newly dead are taught the rules of the game for spooking and how to become a successful spirit in order to complete a ghostly assignment. If Lucy succeeds, she's guaranteed a spot in the next level of the afterlife, called "The State" --but until then, she's stuck as a boot camp ghost in the last place she would ever want to be -- Martin's house in Phoenix.
Lucy and her Naunie, her grandmother and a free spirit 1960s hippie, are deposited by Ruby in Martin's house where she learns, to her shock, that her former fiance has invited Nola, the office manager who made the false accusations and made her take a drug test, to live with him.
Lucy and Naunie have fun tormenting Nola in a novel that is full of laughter. None of the gloom and doom of the classic 1934 movie "Death Takes a Holiday" (remade in 1998 as "Meet Joe Black, with Brad Pitt in the Fredric March role) in "Spooky Little Girl." Laurie Notaro, author of the Idiot Girl series and other books, has a winner with this hilarious take on the joys and sorrows of the "surprised demised".
Author's web site: www.laurienotaro.com
Publisher's web site: www.villardbooks.com
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BOOK REVIEW: Laurie Notaro's 'Spooky Little Girl' Makes a Great Beach Book -- If You Aren't Staying at a Haunted B&B!
Reviewed By David M. Kinchen
Huntingtonnews.net Book Critic
Haven't had enough shivers up and down your spine watching "Ghost Town," "Ghost," "Death Becomes Her"? Why not try Laurie Notaro's "Spooky Little Girl" (Villard Trade Paperback Original, an imprint of Random House, 304 pages, $14.00).
Dental technician Lucy Fisher wants to celebrate the end of being single eight weeks before her wedding to Martin, a supermarket produce manager, so she rounds up her two best friends, Jilly and Marianne, co-workers at the Dr. Meadows dental practice where all three toil, and off they go to Hawaii. The vacation is a disappointment and the return to Phoenix is even more so when Lucy finds all her belongings tossed out on the front lawn and in the bed of her pickup truck. The locks of the house she shares with Martin have been changed and Martin doesn't respond to repeated knocks at the front door.
On top of all this, she's lost her job, accused (falsely, it turns out) of neglecting to deposit a hefty amount of money and checks before leaving on her vacation. I was reminded of the opening of Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", set in late 1950s Phoenix, with Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) absconding with her boss's cash.
Lucy leaves her beloved dog Tulip and many of her belongings with Jilly and drives north up Interstate 17 to her sister Alice's home in Flagstaff, the only place she can think of staying now that she's out both funds and work.
Alice is surrounded by troubles, too, with her cheating husband gone, trying to raise her son Jared on a meager income and -- the latest unkind cut -- being unable to start her car. Lucy lends Alice her truck and makes her way to to the unemployment office near the courthouse. That's where Lucy joins the ranks of the "Surprised Demised" or -- as they're officially called Sudden Death (SD) -- when she is momentarily distracted and is flattened by a city bus.
Lucy Fisher sudden discovers that death is what happens while you're busy making other plans when she meets Ruby, the instructor in SD Room 1118 and her fellow surprisees.
Ruby runs what is essentially a boot camp for the newly dead, where Lucy and her fellow newly dead are taught the rules of the game for spooking and how to become a successful spirit in order to complete a ghostly assignment. If Lucy succeeds, she's guaranteed a spot in the next level of the afterlife, called "The State" --but until then, she's stuck as a boot camp ghost in the last place she would ever want to be -- Martin's house in Phoenix.
Lucy and her Naunie, her grandmother and a free spirit 1960s hippie, are deposited by Ruby in Martin's house where she learns, to her shock, that her former fiance has invited Nola, the office manager who made the false accusations and made her take a drug test, to live with him.
Lucy and Naunie have fun tormenting Nola in a novel that is full of laughter. None of the gloom and doom of the classic 1934 movie "Death Takes a Holiday" (remade in 1998 as "Meet Joe Black, with Brad Pitt in the Fredric March role) in "Spooky Little Girl." Laurie Notaro, author of the Idiot Girl series and other books, has a winner with this hilarious take on the joys and sorrows of the "surprised demised".
Author's web site: www.laurienotaro.com
Publisher's web site: www.villardbooks.com
Share This Story:
Make HNN Your Homepage (IE Users Only)
