Living Dead Girl

Can't stop thinking about this book. If you have children, it will make you think over and over again about what you would do in a similar situation. One of the best books of the year, I think.

A stunning example of what happens when a writer of literary fiction pulls parts of several genres into one compelling piece. Living Dead Girl is such a poetic and heartbreaking book -- equal parts mystery novel, character piece, literary novel and unreliable narration exercise -- and Goldberg was well deserving of his recent nomination for the LA Times Book Prize. Unlike his previous book, Fake Liar Cheat, which was a funny noirish romp through LA aimed at the MTV generation, Living Dead Girl is a serious look into the human condition and what happens when love dies. This is one of those books that should have been a bestseller -- maybe it will be in paperback.

I read this book on a sunny Saturday at the beach. I am sunburned now because I couldn?t stop reading long enough to walk to my car before I finished.There are some very haunting images floating through my mind and yet the biggest thing I have taken away with me from ?Living Dead Girl? is love. The images and emotions that are portrayed in this book are amazingly beautiful sometimes in the most morbid of ways. We want what we touch for a moment to last for a lifetime and yet that moment that we know love is a reality is a moment that becomes a lifetime. I have always believed that there is one person in the world that each of us is meant to love. And while many never find that person and settle for the person that finds them?.it is so apparent in this book that Ginny loves Paul faults and all and yet for him that one person is Molly, a paradox that plays out throughout the entire book. The powerful forces that love can cause and create are amazing. And this novel is nothing like a mystery (like I?ve read all over the internet that it is?..society needs to pigeonhole every damn thing until they make a square peg fit a round hole?!!!) unless you consider the mystery of that which is love. And of course the disappearance of Molly is an ongoing source of questioning.There were passages of this book that simply brought tears to my eyes. Mostly during Paul?s explanations of the good times that he and Molly shared.I know that I will read this book again because there was one story happening in the forefront and another story happening in the background. I think it was amazing how the author manages to make the characters so real that they become people that you care about. Mr. Goldberg managed to make the character of Katrina be someone that I the reader felt myself mourning. The notion that had she just not gotten ill, that somehow Paul and Molly and Katrina would have gone on happily. I suppose that?s not the stuff of good novels though. The trite and happy endings usually follow up a book that totally [stinks]. I think what makes a good novel is one that makes you want to crawl into the book with a giant eraser and say ?NO NO?mr. Writer man?.we will just not have this?..? as we erase with fury and will and an evil grin. But we can?t and so we?re drug through mental hell like a bloody body behind a car. We are already in motion but it?s causing one hell of a brush burn during the ride. These characters will be in my head for a long time to come.It?s a fast paced ride, you?ll never find yourself wondering why you chucked out cash to be this entertained. And you won?t soon forget it.

I was not planning on reading this entire book in one sitting but I ended up spending most of April 24th just reading and reading and reading. I could not put it down. Quite simly, Goldberg is a great writer. His writing has a real human touch and I get excited just thinking about what his next book might be like.

If you were a fan of Tod Goldberg's previous novel, sit down and get ready. If you hated his last book, do the same, because this is a 180 degree departure and it's all for the good. This is literature, a story of an anthropologist who's wife disappears is the first layer of the tale, but the disintegration of the human mind under the stress of loss, both real and imagined, drives this novel of love forward. Its shocking, fluid, hallucinatory, and foremost well written. Gone is the glamour of Goldberg's fine noir novel Fake Liar Cheat, replaced by real human emotions, sadness, love, and above all else, an abiding sense that Tod Goldberg is just now hitting stride. There is no sophomore jinx here...Living Dead Girl is a wonderful and nuanced novel.