One for Sorrow

July 30, 2007
Death forges a supernatural bond between two lonely teenage boys in Barzak's well-intentioned and morbid first novel. Fifteen-year-old Adam McCormick is haunted by the earthbound ghost of his murdered classmate, Jamie Marks. Boy and ghost are drawn to one another by their shared outsider status at school, with the ghost providing support (and a surprising homoerotic romance subplot) for Adam as he survives a disastrous relationship with the sexually predatory Gracie (the classmate who discovered Jamie's body), a scary encounter with the ghost of a murderess and a troubled home life with his older brother and constantly arguing parents. Adam and Jamie's ghost eventually run away and find shelter in an abandoned church, where Adam is tempted to join Jamie, and Jamie delays moving to the next level in the afterlife. Barzak admirably defies convention by not having the two boys search for Jamie's killer, but the replacement plot—one of a bizarre coming-of-age—doesn't always meld well with the narrative's fantastical elements (closets, called dead space, are portals between worlds; ghosts burn memories to keep warm). The macabre tone won't work for readers looking for another Lovely Bones
, but the novel's approach to familiar material is refreshing.

September 15, 2007
In the opening lines of Barzaks debut, 15-year-old Adamdescribes his misfit computer-lab partner; scant pages later, readers learn that Jamie has recentlybeen murdered. Far from a crime-investigation plot, though, the killing precipitates an unusual, ambiguousghost storyrecounted by aprofoundly disconnected teen narrator. As Adam describes repeated, faintly homoeroticencounters with thedead boys ghost, his increasing identification with the benign phantom (hes a corpse waiting for his body to catch up) reflects the living teenswithdrawal from corporeal burdens, especially those plaguing his belligerent, working-class family. Disaffected wanderings ensue that, as much as Adams derision for plastic suburbanites, nod toCatcher in the Rye (a book that Adam reads and that provides one of the novels several opening quotations).Theconcluding, healing homecoming feelsjarringly sappy, and the lack ofclosure about Jamies murderer, a pointed departure frommany readers expectations, will leave some feeling shortchanged. But Barzaksagilemanipulation of readers perceptions is nicely done; so, too, are theeeriedetails of restlessspirits dead spacean apt metaphor forthe terrifying, confusinghinterlands between childhood and adulthood.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)