Riddance

Starred review from August 6, 2018
This clever, cacophonous novel of metaphysical gothic from Jackson (Half Life) teems with voices of the living and the dead. The Sybil Joines Vocational School is a Massachusetts institution in which children with speech impediments are taught “necrophysics,” intended to give them the ability to become “mouthpieces for the dead.” They are chosen because, according to Sybil Joines, the founding headmistress, “stuttering, like writing, is an amateur form of necromancy.” The novel comprises documents about the early history of the academy compiled by a historian: a newspaper account of the murder of a visiting school inspector that serves as the book’s central mystery; the autobiography of star student Jane Grandison, a girl who acts as the headmistress’s stenographer; and the tubercular headmistress’s “final dispatch” (or ghost-channeling session). Also included are observations from a linguistic anthropologist on the school’s quack methods, “calculated... to instill a keen sense of the insignificance of the individual and the flimsiness of his or her claim to existence.” Full of Carrollian logic and whimsical grotesquerie, the tale, which leads up to the campus slaying, is an illuminating allegory of fiction writing, for “the necrocosmos is made of language; we precipitate a world with every word we speak.” Joines is a remarkable creation in a wonderful book—an imperious, otherworldly, and damaged figure who, haunted by her childhood, devises and devotes her life to a haunted philosophy. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.

August 15, 2018
Ambitious new work from the author of Half Life (2006) and Patchwork Girl (1995).This novel begins with an "Editor's Introduction," a fact which is sure to excite fans of postmodern gothic, but even before that, we see what looks like a photocopy of a brittle newspaper clipping describing a murder at a "school for stammerers." The fictional editor goes on to describe an uncanny series of coincidences that fuels her interest in the "Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers & Hearing-mouth Children." The text that follows is presented as a scholarly anthology, a mix of first-person narratives, letters, and excerpts from a variety of secondary sources. There is an audience of readers who will appreciate this book simply for existing. There is an audience of readers who will enjoy the experience of reading this book. There is also an audience of readers who will be thrilled by the idea of this novel and dreadfully disappointed by its execution. There's not much to say about the first category, and the second category will recognize itself. The suggestion that there is a third category requires explication. So...the first disappointment is that, although this novel is supposed to be composed of disparate parts, there is almost no differentiation in voice. The "Editor" sounds a lot like Sybil Joines, who sounds a lot like her stenographer, Jane Grandison. There is a formal argument to be made on behalf of this technical choice--the dead speak through the living in this book, and identities are porous--but the monotony undercuts the gothic conceit Jackson alludes to at the beginning. It's also worth noting that all these nearly indistinguishable voices are equally verbose. No detail is insignificant enough to evade careful notice. "In each perforation of my too-large oxfords, a crescent shadow waxed and waned as its angle to the light changed, or disappeared in my own larger shadow, and inside my loose black stockings, on which tiny fuzz balls clung, my ankles individually flexed and strained." This novel is more than 500 pages, and it proceeds at this pace.Postmodern gothic made tedious.

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November 1, 2018

Jane Grandison is tormented by her schoolmates and family members because of her stutter-that is, until she is invited to live and study at the Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers and Hearing-Mouth Children. The headmistress, Sybil Joines, seeks to cure students' speech issues. She believes the dead can communicate through these students [is this ableism ever addressed? ]. This 1919 gothic tale is told from the alternating points of view of Sybil and Jane, the student-turned-stenographer. Accompanying pictures, diagrams, notes, and letters support the plot. Jackson's writing transports readers, allowing them to look past the morbidity of death and consider the other possibilities of the land of the dead. VERDICT A historical horror murder mystery that is both unexpected and imaginative; purchase where there are fans of creepy stories such as "Miss Peregrine's" books by Ransom Riggs.-Morgan O'Reilly, Riverdale Country School, NY

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2018
The first time she channeled the dead, Sybil Joines was a young girl with a violent stutter. In 1890, she founded the Sybil Joines Vocational School for Ghost Speakers and Hearing-Mouth Children. Now, headmistress Joines hones speech impediments?believed to generate local fluctuation[s] in the directionality of time ?to trek freely between the lands of the living and dead and train students in the delicate art of necromancy. Yet lately, Joines' methods have come under scrutiny, and a particularly promising student has vanished altogether. But when Joines flees to the land of the dead to rescue her, she must also confront her own tragic past, dubious future, and the increasingly precarious foundation on which they both rely. Cleverly mimicking the often discordant communications of the dead, Jackson's (Half Life?, 2006) narrative alternates between Joines' dispatches from beyond the veil, student and stenographer Jane Grandison's recollections, letters, necrophysic readings, and more. Throughout it all, Jackson?and Joines'?(are their shared initials pure coincidence?) spin not only an incredible yarn but a delightfully strange, wondrously original, and dazzlingly immersive gothic love letter to storytelling itself.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)