Joplin's Ghost

I read this several years ago and it was my first introduction to Tananarive Due. I was in bed sick with a really bad stomach virus, but I can remember that I read this in a day and a half because it was that good. When you are sick as ever but you can still enjoy a good novel, you know it is good. I learned a lot too about Scott Joplin and the history of music in the day and age. I really enjoyed this!

Tananaruve Due's gone and done it again. As she did in her historical novel, The Black Rose, Due has me delving into the history books looking for the real person behind the story. The Black Rose told the story Madame C. J. Walker, but this time she takes on the King of Ragtime, Scott Joplin. Joplin's Ghost is a fabulous mix of ghost story, history, and 1990's music world. The book opens in 1917 with Joplin dying of syphilis in the Manhattan State Hospital. As he is wheeled into the day room, he notices a beat-up piano in the corner and tries to play it. The scene is heartbreaking; imagine those fiery fingers gnarled and twisted from that awful disease, unable to do anything but create a cacophony of noise. Then flash forward to 1991. Phoenix Smalls is but a child of ten when a piano falls on her and she almost dies. That's when it starts; the music that Phoenix can't ignore. The music she plays and writes without any knowledge of having done so. After growing up in a Miami nightclub, Phoenix wanted to be a singer. She formed a band, made a couple of CDs, but soon fizzled out. Still, she's been working hard to make it alone. When in St. Louis, her manager/father forces her to make a pilgrimage to Joplin's apartment, the site where "The Entertainer," featured in the movie "The Sting" was written. It's there that Joplin makes his first appearance. He attaches himself to her and begins to channel his lost music through her, thus restoring it to a public who can only dream of ever hearing it again. At the crux of this delightful novel is the music. A lot of Joplin's music has been lost, especially his opera "Guest of Honor." The story weaves between Joplin's life, especially when he lived in St. Louis, and Phoenix's life. Part romance, part ghost story, part urban contemporary, part historical fiction, this complex and absorbing novel is completed, yet simple, and unerringly readable for fans of many genres. Armchair Interviews says: The characters, past and present, feel real.

For as long as she can remember, music has always been an integral part of Phoenix Smalls's life. Now everything seems to be on the fasttrack...after a floundering start, Phoenix and her band have found their way to the inner circle of G-Ronn, a wildly successful hip-hop music producer. With father Sarge's guidance, Phoenix seems destined for stardom; and of course, dating your boss could also earmark one for success... Everything changes for Phoenix when at her father's urging she visits the Scott Joplin house while touring with her band. Shortly thereafter Phoenix starts writing music..ragtime, mostly, in the hand of the dead musician, resurrecting pieces that musical historians had long thought lost. But will Scott's singular desire to reintroduce his music to the world overcome Phoenix and end her own musical career before it even starts? An intriguing tale of love that transcends even death...and of the struggle of one young woman to balance the needs of the living with those of the dead....without losing her own life in the process. A fabulous novel that I quite literally could not put down. DYB

Phoenix Smalls, a budding R & B star, had an interesting childhood. When she was ten, a piano crashed down a flight of stairs into her, leaving her in a coma for weeks. After she regained consciousness, her father found her sleepwalking and playing ragtime music that she normally wouldn't have had the skill to perform. Later, under the management of her strict and austere father, Phoenix's career in music began to take off. Then, once again, strange things started happening to her. The first incident was finding a man in her hotel room. The police searched the room and found no one, but because her cousin told the police about a fan who spent the night with Phoenix, it caused personal, emotional pain for Phoenix. Also, when visiting the home of Scott Joplin, at her father's insistence, she saw a man in the living room after the proprietor told her she was alone. Those aren't the only incidents of spotting men, of having her dreams disturbed or performing music she was unfamiliar with. During a radio program, instead of performing her hit song, she launches into an opera by Scott Joplin. Phoenix begins to recognize that she is in communication with the late ragtime artist. Scott Joplin is persistent; he wants the world to hear his music, to know and acknowledge his genius, which doesn't happen when he is alive. Gradually, he takes over Phoenix's life; pushing her in the direction he wants her to go. Tananarive Due includes so much wonderful history, not only about Scott Joplin, but also about how black musicians were viewed by society at the turn of the last century. She tells of the segregation of the artists and how society accepts some kinds of music, while rejecting others. Ms. Due lets us into Scott Joplin's life, with its ups and downs, his wives, his frightening illness and his early death. Because of the way Ms. Due intertwines Phoenix and Scott's lives, it is easy to really believe that Mr. Joplin is actually in Phoenix's life, pushing her, and controlling her talents. There were many parallels between Joplin's life and Phoenix's desire to become a great musician and the drive that pushed them both. In some places, the story was a bit slow and a faster pace would have made for easier reading, but I truly appreciated all the history about music that is included and it is information that I was totally unaware of. It made me start exploring the music of Scott Joplin and appreciating it more than I had in the past. It is a novel well worth reading. Reviewed by Alice Holman of The RAWSISTAZ™ Reviewers

With JOPLIN'S GHOST, Tananarive Due breaks new literary ground by fusing elements of her historical novel (THE BLACK ROSE) with her many superb supernatural thrillers (MY SOUL TO KEEP, LIVING BLOOD, GOOD HOUSE, etc.). The effect is at once marvelously jarring, and thrill-ride exciting, giving the reader multi-dimensional characters they will honestly care about, plus a deftly paced plot, and otherworldly adventures; all woven into an excellent tale they won't be able to put down. In JOPIN'S GHOST, an up-and-coming female R & B dance-diva, Phoenix, has an unexpected encounter with the ghost of Scott Joplin, which leads to a full-on, all-out haunting. Whether being scared out of her wits by creepy telekinetically-moving objects, or channeling Joplin's lost musical scores, or enjoying the "special touch" of the apparition, Phoenix is drawn in more and more, all but a prisoner to the macabre manipulations of her ghost. Those who love Phoenix are in a race against time to break her free from this eerie svengali, before he finally pulls Phoenix over to The Other Side, together forever with him in the hereafter. Also, the novel presents an intriguing peek into the struggles of black musicians, both modern-day and past, and presents the dilemma all artists face: how to merge commercialism and art without risking artistic integrity. Interesting family dynamics are portrayed as well, which play nicely into the book from beginning to end. Ms. Due wisely chose to avoid the clichés of hardcore slasher horror and opted instead for a character-driven literary ghost tale that paints vivid cinematic pictures (as only she can do), and gives the reader flesh-and-blood folks they will be musing about for many nights to come. Thought-provoking + Page-turner = Definitely recommended.

I have been a fan of Tananarive Due and her husband, Stephen Barnes from the very beginning of their writing careers. In Ms. Due's current book, JOPLIN'S GHOST, she does another masterful job of making the supernatural seem plausible and leaves readers wondering if those bumps in the night are really "just" their imagination. Phoenix is an incredible character. She is strong yet vulnerable and through her eyes, we get to see Scott Joplin in all of his perfections and his flaws. Scott Joplin dies of syphillus and the way Ms. Due weaves in reality with "unreality" one is left in the uncomfortable position of trying to figure out what reality truly is. There is a line where Mr. Joplin asks Freddie/Phoenix is she really there and if he is mad. She tells him yes he is mad and yes she is there. To me, that line challenges the age-old question of what is real and what isn't. Is reality what exists in each individuals mind or is it something that must be shared collectively. I'm not sure if those answers are given, or even if they need to be, but I will say this book is one of my favorites of Ms. Dues. Her writing only gets better and better with time.