Ghostwalk

I loved Ghostwalk! As you read, you feel like you are part of the investigation at hand.

Judging by the review comments here, readers either love Ghostwalk or hate it. That's called controversy, and that's a sign of something compelling about the novel. I'm in the former group; I loved it. Let's start with the use of the second person voice: technically, it's difficult, but Stott does it stylishly and in a manner that often makes it seem the protagonist is speaking directly to the reader (though in fact Lydia's addressing the story to her lover). Readers object to the adulterous, on again-off again affair between Lydia and Cameron and seem puzzled by what she sees in him. Excuse me? The guy is brilliant, handsome, and successful (we don't comprehend that he's also a prodigious liar until late in the story). But there is a deeper issue at work here: Perfectly normal, even deeply intelligent women (and men) fall obsessively in love all the time. If a reader can't understand how an exceptional woman like Lydia can be drawn repeatedly into an utterly wrong affair, it is because that reader has never experienced the madness of obsessive love. Rebecca Stott has written a book that defies easy categorization and this, too, seems to trouble those who seek to pigeonhole it. If Stott's book is marketed as a "thriler," that's her publisher's mistake, not hers. She has created a complex story that is at once history, mystery, science, romance, magical realism, and (to a much lesser extent) thriller. And she's done it deftly. I don't call that confounding; I call it a bonanza. Do I have quibbles? Well, of course. This is a debut novel, with some beginner's weaknesses. However, I am happy to let them pass and just give in to the magic of a challenging and compelling story. I can't wait to see what Stott's got up her sleeve for us next.

I decided to read Ghostwalk because it contained a blurb by Iain Pears, a favorite author of mine. Mr. Pears did not let me down when he praised this " 'beautifully written book.'" This unusual novel is partly about alchemy and the author practices her own sort of literary alchemy in melding elements of mystery, science, history and romance. Stott has an hypnotic style of writing that casts a spell over the reader and I especially loved the way she captured the complexities of the relationship between Lydia and Cameron. I could not put the book down, but now, as with other novels that I have really enjoyed, I feel strangely bereft because I have finished it. I am eagerly looking forward to her next work of fiction!

The great work of alchemy is both the subject and the controlling metaphor for this novel. Lydia Brooke takes on the task of ghost-writing the last chapters and final draft of a study of Isaac Newton's involvement with alchemy written by her friend, Elizabeth Vogelsang (also the mother of her former lover.) Initially Lydia sees the major elements of that process as Elizabeth's existing research and writing on Newton and the author's ideas about where the study was going, ideas that must be recovered from notes and conversations with Elizabeth's friends. The work is undertaken in Elizabeth's studio, a veritable retort of a space, all glass and light - air bright with sun and fire, the earth of an apple orchard all around, and the river on the margins. The reader soon realizes what Lydia refuses to recognize: Elizabeth's son, Cameron Brown, Lydia's lover for a decade past, is a major element of the process in the studio. So the process she is consciously working on is not the process actually in motion. Lydia is not the alchemist here; that is Elizabeth - or, more precisely, the historical past. Lydia and Cameron are the elements in the chemical marriage. The really brilliant decision to narrate the novel as first-person directly addressed to Cameron underscores this. But for the great work to succeed, the elements and the adept must be pure, a point Stott makes with the Isaac Newton material. No one is pure in this novel. Lydia lies to herself, to her friends, to Cameron, lies unnecessarily, casually almost. Cameron lies enormously, to everyone, and cheats cruelly, as well as undertaking a truly wicked course of action. And yet, perhaps the most impure element here is Elizabeth - as a metaphor for the past -- whose unexplained death opens the book. Although the past intrudes, sometimes violently, the novel isn't actually a time-slip, insofar as we are not taken back to the 17th century. But there are long passages from Elizabeth's manuscript describing life for Newton in Cambridge of the 1660s. One reviewer here objects to that, but the novel is about perspective - Elizabeth's and Lydia's as well as Newton's. Putting the reader unproblematically into the past wouldn't work here; it needs to be mediated, since the work of writing is all about mediating reality. As I read the book, I did wonder about the decision to market it as a thriller. It has very frightening moments and a number of people die violent deaths. On those grounds, yes, it is a thriller. But thrillers as a genre are not especially intellectual, generally relying more on action than introspection (says I, their constant reader.) This book requires thinking. But it rewards even the lightest efforts with a vast array of gifts - the history of glass-making, life during the plague years, glimpses into the alchemical work of writing itself, college politics in the rarified air of Trinity during Newton's time, a powerful love story and the tattered edges of a mas

Ghostwalk is Rebecca Scott's debut novel which combines both fact and fiction. Ghostwalk is set in present day and the 17th century Cambridge, that mixes a beautiful love story as well as a historical investigation. The story begins as Elizabeth Vogelsang is found floating in the river just below her garden with a prisim in her hand. Elizabeth was a Cambridge University historian, she was working on a manuscript involving Isaac Newton and the 17th century alchemists. Elizabeth's son recruits Lydia to move into Elizabeth's place and into finishing his mothers book. You will be amazed at the events that follow and at the discoveries Lydia makes along the way. If you are looking for a thriller with romance, mystery, murder, and the supernatural this one will surely fill your desires. I found this one to be beautifully written and it is apparent that the author has done her research. I found that with Ghostwalk you must read with comprehension as it may leave you reading back through again to assure nothing was missed the first time.