The third of the three novellas in this book, "Ground Zero," is a shattering gem. A Manhattan psychiatrist giving an obsessively narrow account of her treatment of one of her patients; the way she continues to focus on helping him with the same trivial problems in his life, both before and after the day the world trade center falls, is mysteriously riveting. Somehow McGrath captures, through the psychiatrist's refusal to confront the aftermath of 9/11, exactly the horror and strangeness of those first days and weeks and months in Manhattan. I'm not sure why this oblique storytelling works, where a more direct account might seem maudlin and trivial, but it does. ( )

This is a small one, not sure why it took so long to read. Think I dragged my feet a little.

Thing one: these aren't ghost stories. I thought they were kinda gonna be, but it's ok. Ghostly, though. They're foremost historical fiction (a pretty superb ingredient for ghost stories, but oh well), and very enthusiastic ones. Lots of street names, neighborhood. One I used to live in, so well-appreciated. From the earliest story: "Like my mother I am loath to flee the town at the first sign of trouble. It will kill me, of course, New York will kill me ... I will go down, as they say in the grog shops hereabouts, with my vessel! With my ship!"

First story: 3.5 stars. Should probably be 3, but this gets the sentimental round-up. Taking place in occupied NYC, 1777, in the old downtown: APPROVED. The details are swift and really great. A whole lot is packed in there and I like it a lot. The eventual story of his mother's secret work and martyrdom is ok if simplistic, and might even be appropriate for young readers, since the child's narration is really innocent. Though it isn't exactly gripping.

Still, my favorite creepy detail: the question remaining, how is it exactly that he has his mother's skull in his hands, all these years later? GOOD QUESTION, right? There is clearly something we don't know. Which is really good actually.

Second story: 4.5 stars. I am not quite sure what I enjoyed so much but I did. The story is again simple but so vivid. It's like a fable you don't know the ending to. It's set around 1860. This is the longest story, and still feels compact, well-built. I really enjoyed this a lot. "Somewhere in the recesses of his heart a mortal wound was weeping."

Third story: 2.5 stars. A weird one. The only contemporary piece. I liked the first half, and thought a clear-eyed psychiatrist was an interesting choice of perspective for a 9/11 story, and the story of her patient and his relationship with an escort affected by the attacks. And the 9/11 of it, really, is good, affecting and detailed, difficult. I was on board.

This narrative perspective gets thrown off, though, because she starts to drift. There is an early clue, the story's first line stating that her patient is "like a son", but following with no behavior from her surpassing the professional. Which is weird. And then her behavior does surpass the professional, and I thought, ah, well, no, that's not good. The character seems to change after her visit to the site -- "Until I went to Ground Zero, I had rejected the concept of evil" -- and she quickly turns her judgements on her patient. He's pathologically obsessed, his girlfriend is a sociopath. A Chinese one no less. She fixates on the woman's Americanness.

Which is all an interesting kink in the story, but I felt a bit dislodged. I no longer agreed with the narrator, so perhaps I was meant to agree with the prostitute. But these same events make her begin to drift into badness, too, and I wasn't sure what feeling the author was bringing across any more. I think the ending could have been more unsettling, more something, so I knew what to see.

A bit of a :-| way to end the book, but really I liked it, and I'll be keeping it. ( )

http://lizzysiddal.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/ghosts-trauma-and-patrick-mcgrath-in... ( )

One of the worst books I have ever read. Three stories in different time periods all set in New York. Unconvincing in every way. Bad plots, illogical plot-turns, uninteresting, badly designed characters. The last story I classify as 911-pornography. Not so much because of the bad sex descriptions in the story, but because the link-up with 911 is absolutely unnecessary for the story itself, and has been put in just to sell the story. About the only positive thing that can be said about this book is that technically he writes rather well, otherwise I wouldn't have finished it. ( )