Rhian Ellis

I registered this book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14428538

A strange little story about a woman who grows up with mediums and other "spiritual" characters, who live together in a shabby little town. When people want their palms read, their past lives elucidated, to hear from their grandparents, they find someone in Train Line. Naomi grows up with a mother who works as a medium and in her youth she assisted her by pretending to be various dead children in the dark. So she knows much of it is fakery.

It's a bit of a shock when she discovers she has some actual kind of gift in this area.

She then accidentally does something that solidifies her place in the spiritual world but also makes her an outlaw in the earthly world. And she has to get away.… (meer)

From the arresting opening passage to the bittersweet epilogue, After Life kept me entranced; I had trouble putting this book down. The cast of characters could have been kooky caricatures in less skillful hands, but instead they were real people with ambitions and problems and hygiene issues. The mystery aspect was deftly handled as to keep me riveted, and despite her questionable reliability, I cared deeply for our narrator and what would become of her. I couldn't help make connections to Shirley Jackson's Merricat Blackwood along the way. Jackson fans will find a home here.… (meer)