A Spooky Fun Read

Last night I finished reading Laurie Notaro's fiction debut, Spooky Little Girl. Notaro, author of The Idiot Girls' Action Adventure Club and other humorous (I mean hilarious) memoirs, enters the fiction world with a fun tale of ghosts and unfinished business.

Lucy Fisher is down on her luck lately, but sure that things will turn around. They do, but not exactly as she'd hoped. While crossing the street to the unemployment office, she's hit by a bus. She wakes up to find that she's entered ghost school, in between states of being, where she will learn the ropes of being a ghost and prepare for returning to her previous life so she can fulfill her requirements in order to move on. Return as a ghost, that is. And her assignment is not exactly clear.

There is a slight sad note to the book. Not to put a damper on things, but no one knows Lucy is dead! No one but her sister, that is. And this is based on a story Notaro was told by a third party. Her imagined Lucy is spunky and fun, but you have to wonder about the girl who brought on the tale to begin with.

That's enough of that! Notaro is really funny. She brings a sort of slapstick comedy to this ghost story that makes it utterly charming and compulsively readable. I got flashbacks of Beetle Juice and Dead Like Me while reading it. True, the comedy is not quite as dark as Dead Like Me, there are no reapers, and what reminds me of Beetle Juice is merely the new girl trying to figure out being a spectre of her former self, but it's all dead comedy.