This is one ghost story that guarantees you’ll be spooked
I’ve been a fan of Chris Bohjalian since he wrote Midwives, a bestseller about a midwife who has a birth go wrong. What I found fascinating about the book — aside from the subject of birth, which always grabs me — was the way Bohjalian treated the subject.
Although Midwives is a novel, it is also a study on the sometimes controversial subject of midwifery, and I felt that Bohjalian presented some pretty convincing and unbiased arguments both in support of midwifery and in support of hospital births with doctors.
Bohjalian skilfully gave the same treatment to homeopathic medicine in The Law of Similars, and to sex change operations in Trans Sister Radio.
In his latest book, The Night Strangers, Bohjalian uses this same storytelling strategy, but applies it to ghosts instead of midwives. A side plot about New England herbalists, who may or may not be witches, just adds to the suspense. A spellbinding story with all sorts of explanations, both eerie and earthly, is the result.
The story begins with a plane crash. Chip Linton is the pilot of a 70- seat regional jet that hits a flock of geese, which disable the engines. Linton tries to land the plane on Lake Champlain, but unlike what happened in “the miracle on the Hudson,” most of the passengers die. Linton is instantly infamous as the pilot who is not Sully Sullenberger. He is also suffering from post- traumatic stress disorder after the horrific crash in which he survived, but 39 others were killed.
Chip and his wife Emily and twin 10- year- old daughters decide to move to a new town where everybody doesn’t know them. They move into a Victorian house in New Hampshire — a house that may or may not be haunted.
Chip meets some of the plane crash victims as ghosts in his new house. One of them, the father of a young girl who also died in the crash, encourages Chip to kill at least one of his daughters because the dead girl deserves friends. Chip hides his interaction with the ghosts from his family, and wonders if he’s lost his mind. Readers can draw their own conclusion as to whether the ghosts are real, or merely manifestations of his PTSD.
Meanwhile, the women in the town — who are all named after plants — are showing increasing interest in Chip and Emily’s twin daughters Garnet and Hallie. The family who lived in the house before the Linton’s also had twins, one of whom died under mysterious circumstances. The women want to change the twins’ names to plant names, and it’s a unclear whether the women are caring in a grandmotherly way, or creepy in a predatory way.
Like each of Bohjalian’s 14 books, The Night Strangers is well written and a pleasure to read. The plot, the characters, the relationships and the insights are all believable and poignant. But it is a ghost story, and as such, readers will be spooked. It’s a dark tale, complete with secrets, blood and betrayal. If you’re up for a ghost story and prepared to suspend your reality for a while, this book should satisfy.