From Amazon.com
Harvard's Adams House has a checkered past--ghosts in the attic, shadowy tunnels under the basement, and a history of student suicides and murders. The present isn't much sunnier, especially for the nameless protagonist, a senior plagued by memories of his freshman roommate's death and haunted by a specter who's got a few scores to settle before he quits this earthly realm for good. Author Sean Desmond, a Harvard graduate, takes us deep inside the drug and spirit-ridden head of his main character, who's got girlfriend troubles as well as a thesis to finish, a guilty secret to hide, and a problem or two with reality. It doesn't endear us to this overprivileged twit, but it adds to the Gothic atmosphere, which is laid on with a heavy hand. The ghost from the past is a much more interesting figure. He's a vindictive playboy with charm that doesn't quite equal his prescience in choosing a target whose descent into madness--and maybe murder--is horrifyingly depicted. In this, his debut novel, Desmond shows signs of an emerging talent. Unfortunately it's not fully realized in this somewhat muddled, though exceptionally creepy, tale.
--Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
Restless ghosts roam the august halls of Harvard in this debut psychothriller, a younger sibling to The Shining. In his senior year at Harvard, the unnamed narrator's life is falling apart. Having faithfully toiled in his classes for three years with good results, he is now burnt out as he goes through the motions of composing his senior thesis, and completes his application for study abroad with all the animation of a zombie. He is bored with his girlfriend, Rosie, and haunted by memories of her ex, Billy, the narrator's freshman roommate and former best friend, who hanged himself in their room. The protagonist copes by frantic boozing, drug taking and clandestine sex with his glamorous classmate, Maeve. But he begins to suffer headaches and spells of d j vu while restlessly pacing the dorm's old underground tunnels and its roof. He can't figure out why his grades slip perilously and his health declines, until he meets a spectral visitor from the past who appears to be enjoying himself at the narrator's expense and hints at sexual secrets. Things go terribly wrong on Halloween, when the narrator, in a mushroom-induced paranoia, wakes up with a fearsome image of Maeve dead in the underground tunnels. To his horror, he finds that the ghost, a former Adams resident, is merrily reconstructing two deadly scenes from the past, using the narrator and his circle as stand-ins. Newcomer Desmond shows a flair for character development and wry observations about Ivy League life. Even if his plotting is unoriginal and the dialogue a bit flat, this is an entertaining debut and a suitable Halloween release. (Oct.)
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