A Reunion of Ghosts: A Novel

by Judith Claire Mitchell

Overview

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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062355898
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	01/26/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Judith Claire Mitchell, author of the novel The Last Day of the War, is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Mitchell has received fellowships from the James A. Michener/Copernicus Society, Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, Wisconsin Arts Board, and elsewhere. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin.

Editorial Reviews

This is a triumphant, beautiful, and devastating novel about coincidences, family, and the sins of our fathers.” — Anthony Doerr, New York Times bestselling author of All The Light We Cannot See

“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.” — Lauren Groff, New York Times bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia

“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.” — Emma Straub, New York Times bestselling author of The Vacationers

“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 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.” — Los Angeles Times

“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.” — Financial Times

“What’s so funny about three sisters bent on committing suicide? Plenty, in the imagination of Judith Claire Mitchell…. Darkly witty.” — Dallas Morning News

“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.” — Columbus Dispatch

“The novel is written like a long, group suicide note filled with personal and family revelations—brutally funny ones.” — New York Post

“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.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Mitchell’s masterful family saga…captures the agony and ecstasy (but mostly agony) with deep empathy and profound wit. For the Alters, life has been a seemingly endless series of tragedies; for us, the tragedy is that this stunning novel inevitably comes to an end.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“[A] quirky, profound, tragic, morbidly comical family saga.” — Buffalo News

“Dark but comedic.… The wit of the three sisters alone will inspire you as much as the warming weather outside.” — Buzzfeed, “16 Awesome New Books To Read This Spring”

“My favourite novel of the year so far…. A literary mash-up of The Virgin Suicides and Grey Gardens. I wouldn’t be surprised if Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola are slugging it out for the film rights already.” — Sam Baker, Harper's Bazaar online (UK)

“For the Alter sisters, living with the guilt of the generations, there is only one way out…. This novel is a carefully crafted, thought-provoking examination of history past and present as seen through the eyes of a complex yet humble family.” — Booklist

“A clever, modern tale that…hearkens back to…a host of unusual, lively memorable characters.… Darkly humorous.” — Library Journal

From the Publisher

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.

Financial Times

What’s so funny about three sisters bent on committing suicide? Plenty, in the imagination of Judith Claire Mitchell…. Darkly witty.

Dallas Morning News

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.

Columbus Dispatch

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.

Emma Straub

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.

Lauren Groff

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.

Los Angeles Times

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

This is a triumphant, beautiful, and devastating novel about coincidences, family, and the sins of our fathers.

Anthony Doerr

The novel is written like a long, group suicide note filled with personal and family revelations—brutally funny ones.

New York Post

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.

Financial Times

The novel is written like a long, group suicide note filled with personal and family revelations—brutally funny ones.

New York Post

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.

|Los Angeles Times

Dark but comedic.… The wit of the three sisters alone will inspire you as much as the warming weather outside.

“16 Awesome New Books To Read This Spring Buzzfeed

For the Alter sisters, living with the guilt of the generations, there is only one way out…. This novel is a carefully crafted, thought-provoking examination of history past and present as seen through the eyes of a complex yet humble family.

Booklist

My favourite novel of the year so far…. A literary mash-up of The Virgin Suicides and Grey Gardens. I wouldn’t be surprised if Wes Anderson and Sofia Coppola are slugging it out for the film rights already.

Sam Baker

[A] quirky, profound, tragic, morbidly comical family saga.

Buffalo News

For the Alter sisters, living with the guilt of the generations, there is only one way out…. This novel is a carefully crafted, thought-provoking examination of history past and present as seen through the eyes of a complex yet humble family.

Booklist

Dark but comedic.… The wit of the three sisters alone will inspire you as much as the warming weather outside.

“16 Awesome New Books To Read This Spring&rd Buzzfeed

★ 01/19/2015
Mitchell’s triumphant second novel (The Last Day of the War) explores love, identity, and the burdens of history in coruscating, darkly comic prose. As the 20th century closes, Lady, Delph, and Vee Alter decide to kill themselves. The decision is not surprising; the middle-aged sisters embrace the chart of previous family suicides that hangs in their New York apartment as a source of “reassuring inevitability.” Departing from Alter tradition, however, they decide to leave a suicide note, intertwining their own narratives into their family’s complex history. At the heart of it is German Jew turned Lutheran Lenz Alter, who invented the chemical process that created the chlorine gas used in WWI and a predecessor to Zyklon B, used in Nazi death camps. His culpability seemed to poison the generations, as Lenz; his wife, Iris; their son, Richard; and Richard’s three daughters (one of whom is the mother of Lady, Delph, and Vee) all died by their own hands. Or so the sisters think, until a surprising visitation suggests that the family curse is not as defining as it seems. Moving nimbly through time and balancing her weightier themes with the sharply funny, fiercely unsentimental perspectives of her three protagonists—each distinct, yet also, as their name suggests, at “different stages of a single life”—Mitchell’s fictional suicide note is poignant and pulsing with life force. Agent: Eric Simonoff, WME Entertainment. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

02/01/2015
Meet the rather sad small sorority of Lady, Vee, and Delph Alter, sisters who have given themselves the "deadline" of late December 1999 to commit suicide. Their reasons are based mostly on that the Alters have miserable luck, stretching back to their great-grandfather, whose brilliant scientific legacy has clouded and haunted their lives. Lady, enamored with alcohol and television, has attempted suicide previously; Vee has suffered many losses owing to cancer, which has visited once again. Sheltered spinster Delph has lived a life of few dreams. And so the Alter curse must be broken, thus the siblings gather in their ancestral Upper West Side apartment. Mitchell (The Last Day of the War) presents the sisters sympathetically in this clever, modern tale that somehow also hearkens back to Albert Einstein, Walt Whitman, and a host of unusual, lively memorable characters. Following the novel's conclusion, the author's note reveals fascinating historical information. VERDICT While the dark theme may not appeal to some readers, this serious study of a very odd family has its darkly humorous side. [See Prepub Alert, 10/15/14.]—Andrea Tarr, Corona P.L., CA

Library Journal

★ 2015-01-08
Three middle-aged sisters collaborating on a memoir that's meant to double as their collective suicide note may not sound like a hilarious premise for a novel, but Mitchell's masterful family saga is as funny as it is aching. Together, Lady, Vee and Delph Alter have decided that New Year's Eve, 1999—the cusp of the new millennium—will be the day they end their lives, quietly and with as little melodrama as possible. But first, they have embarked upon writing this "whatever-it-is—this memoir, this family history, this quasi-confessional." It will record the saga of the last four generations of Alters (theirs included). Also, it will double as their joint suicide note. ("Q: How do three sisters write a single suicide note? A: The same way a porcupine makes love: carefully.") Suicide seems to run in the Alter family, and now it has reached the current generation: Vee, the middle sister—whose beloved husband was murdered getting lunch one day at Chock full o'Nuts—has cancer, with six months to a year left. If one sister goes, they're all going. And so begins their project, which traces the Alter family history, starting with their maternal great-grandmother, brilliant and stifled, and great-grandfather, the German-Jewish Nobel Prize-winning chemist who invented the gas that would ultimately be used in the Nazi death chambers. "He was the sinner who doomed us all," they write, the root of the ill-fated family tree. She died (a gun in the garden); he followed suit (morphine). With variations, the subsequent generations did the same. Moving seamlessly between the past and the present, from Germany to the Upper West Side, Mitchell's (The Last Day of the War, 2004) dark comedy captures the agony and ecstasy (but mostly agony) with deep empathy and profound wit. For the Alters, life has been a seemingly endless series of tragedies; for us, the tragedy is that this stunning novel inevitably comes to an end.

Kirkus Reviews