Haunted by spirits - and memories

October 11, 2009|Diane White

October’s lineup begins with a novel about a purloined ancient manuscript and a pair of ghosts in the Boston Athenaeum. The second novel is about twin sisters, a psychological suspense story with otherworldly overtones. The third is a well-constructed piece that reimagines the final days of Virginia Woolf.

Anza O’Malley, the engaging narrator of “The Book of Illumination,’’ is the result of a collaboration between paranormal investigator Mary Ann Winkowski, consultant to CBS-TV’s “Ghost Whisperer,’’ and writer/filmmaker Maureen Foley. Anza can see and speak with ghosts, a gift she inherited from her Italian grandmother. Perhaps more astonishing is that Anza manages to support herself and her 5-year old son Henry, in Cambridge yet, by working as a freelance bookbinder. Now that really requires suspension of disbelief.

Anza’s narrative style is appealingly matter-of-fact. Her ability to communicate with the departed is normal, she tells her friend Sylvia. “Ghosts are just another category of people, with the same quirks and qualities they possessed in life.’’ Sylvia, a fellow bookbinder who works at the Boston Athenaeum, is in a jam. She has been secretly working on an illustrated manuscript that may be the long-lost Book of Kildare, a 12th century Irish masterpiece rumored to be even more splendid than the Book of Kells. Now the book has disappeared, and someone is cutting it up and selling the plates on the black market. The desecration has attracted the angry ghosts of two monks who have been guarding the manuscript since the 12th century. Anza finds the time to placate the spirits and help Sylvia, even as she juggles the demands of motherhood, her bookbinding career, and a couple of subplots, one involving a charming manuscript expert. “The Book of Illumination’’ has some evocative descriptions of Boston and Cambridge, the work, I assume, of Foley, who lives in the area.

The word “haunting’’ applies to “The Last Will of Moira Leahy.’’ Therese Walsh’s strange, fascinating novel of psychological suspense is suffused with the supernatural. Maeve Leahy, a young professor of languages at a small college, is haunted by memories of her lost twin, Moira. Her sister has been in a coma for nearly 10 years after an accident that Maeve blames herself for causing. After Maeve buys an antique Javanese dagger, called a keris, at an auction, her nightmares and hallucinations about Moira become more intense.