Spooky Little Girl

Synopsis: Lucy Fisher comes home from a Hawaiian vacation to find her life turned completely upside down. Her fiancee has thrown all of her possessions out of the house they share, including her wedding dress. Then, Lucy finds out she has lost her job. Not knowing what to do with herself after such a shocking turn of events, Lucy heads to her sister's house to regroup.And as the old saying goes, just when you think things can't get any worse, they do. Lucy is suddenly dead and trying to learn to navigate an entirely new situation: the other side. As it turns out for Lucy, the other side involves going back to school. School to learn to spook, that is. Lucy learns that she will be sent back to Earth, to "live" among her family and old show more friends until she completes her mission. What the mission is, she doesn't know. But Lucy does know that she has to complete the mission, without breaking any of the spooking rules, or risk being trapped on Earth forever.Review: I have long been a fan of Laurie Notaro's hysterical memoirs and was excited when her first fiction novel, There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble, was released. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the book. I found the novel to be difficult. That being said, I am extremely pleased with Notaro's second fiction novel, because Spooky Little Girl was fabulous.I'm such a fan of Magical Realism that I could almost not not love this novel. I found Lucy to be so endearing. She was a completely likeable, sympathetic character. The plot of the novel was interesting and very funny. I laughed aloud many times while reading it. Notaro's brilliance with Spooky Little Girl is making Lucy's reactions to being dead, being in spook school, and then being thrust back among the living, mirror how the reader images they would feel in the same situation.And if you need another reason to check out this novel, it was an extremely quick read, because I couldn't put it down. show less

Lucy Fisher is in a bad patch. When she returns home from a Hawaiian vacation with her best friends, she finds that her fiance has thrown all her belongings into the yard, changed the locks, and is holding her dog hostage. He refuses to talk to her. She loses her job. She goes to visit her sister because she doesn't know what else to do and ends up being killed when she walks in front of a bus. She finds herself not in the hereafter but in the nearly hereafter where she attends ghost school and learns that she must complete a mission to gain access to the hereafter. She finds herself haunting her fiance's house and his new girlfriend (who happens to have been instrumental in her loss of her job). The only upside is that she can be with show more her beloved dog. None of her friends know that she is dead. To them she is just missing. The story talks about righting wrongs and having second chances in a snarky and humorous manner. It was a touching and thought provoking book. show less

I love Laurie Notaro. I do. Even before I knew who Jen Lancaster was, I was getting splitting stitches in my side from laughing at her misadventures since The Idiot Girls’ Action-Adventure Club. Also, I am totally addicted to the TV show Ghost Adventures; so if Laurie Notaro and Ghost Adventures had a love child, it would be Spooky Little Girl.

This is by far the funniest book I have read so far this year. I chose this novel because I needed one with a size in the title for the What’s in a Name? Challenge. The truth is I really wasn’t looking forward to reading it. Although I love her true-life comedy books, I tried to read Ms. Notaro’s first attempt at fiction and sadly couldn’t make it past page 10. I’m glad I gave this one show more a try because it was quite a pleasant surprise.

After returning from a bad vacation in Hawaii – I didn’t think that was possible – Lucy returns to have her stuff thrown all across the lawn of the home she shares with her fiancé Martin. Then she is fired from her job. With a broken heart, unemployed Lucy moves in with her sister Alice (great name). And if things aren’t terrible enough for her, on her way to the unemployment office she accidentally steps in front of a bus and meets an unexpected and early demise. What happens next is one of the best ghost stories (okay, this only ghost story) I have ever read.

Lucy endures weeks of “spook” training before heading back to earth to complete an assignment before she heads to the “State,” her final destination. Lucy hopes to return to Alice’s house, to help her sister, but things never happen as planned, even in death. Lucy heads right back to Martin’s house to complete her mission. What ensues is a very humorous adventure to solve the mysterious mission.

I loved the characters in this novel. Naunie, Lucy’s grandmother was fantastic. She reminded me a bit of Grandma Mazur from Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum series. She had plenty of moxie. I love how Ms. Notaro explains the many Lady in White ghosts. You know whom I am talking about, no matter where you are there is always a legend of a Lady in White ghost. (Annie from Annie’s Road in Totowa, NJ is our local Lady in White.) I also enjoyed being party of Lucy’s relationship with Tulip, her rescued dog. And the ghost hunt/séance scene still makes me crack up just thinking of it.

Overall, this is a great book that will appeal to lovers of the paranormal or to anyone who believes in a second chance to get it right. And even if you don’t believe in second chances, there is always laughter. And who doesn’t like to laugh? show less

One of the better ghost stories I have come across, reminding me of Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella. Lucy Fisher knows all about the phrase 'Life's a bitch and then you die' - her fiancé makes her homeless without a word of explanation, she loses her job, has to move in with her sister, and then loses a fight with a bus. But for Lucy, life starts after death.

OK, so the whole plot is a cheesy set of clichés, affectionately 'borrowed' from movies like Ghost and Poltergeist, and the tone shifts into chick lit overdrive in the final few chapters, but Lucy is endearing enough to make the reader cheer her on in the fight against clingy, tasteless replacement girlfriends and fake spiritualists. Tulip really won my heart, though!

Lucy Fisher’s life is far from uneventful. On the day she returns from a disastrous Hawaiian vacation, she finds her possessions on the front lawn and that her fiancé has changed the locks. The next day she is accused of embezzlement, fails a drug test and gets fired from her job. The day after that, Lucy is flattened by a city bus. This enormously entertaining novel combines the conventions of domestic and paranormal fiction and skewers every cultural reference to the afterlife from Mitch Albom to Patrick Swayze. Enjoy!

A fun but not amazing read. I liked Lucy much better after she kicked it -- for the first couple chapters she comes across as super self-involved and hard to connect to. (I suspect that's partly a side effect of the author's attempt to hold certain facts back to give the book some suspense.) Lucy's grandmother is hilarious, and the book truly hits its stride once she enters the story. The author's excellent grasp of the ridiculous (and the recommendations of the book club) makes me want to go read some of her nonfiction.

Bonus? The plot doesn't go where I expect. Which I'm counting as a spoiler, because there's nothing like someone telling me there's a plot twist to make me spot it far in advance. And this isn't a twist so much as an show more unusual direction for one of my 'fluff' reading choices. For some reason, I'd thought she would be jumping back into her life at the end -- a misreading/misremembering of the cover copy maybe -- but the actual ending is much more satisfying.

One thing I found slightly odd was the change in POV from the third person limited at the start of the novel to multiple third person viewpoints at end. The POV is extremely tight at the beginning -- everything is filtered through Lucy's eyes and thoughts. But towards the end other viewpoints start slipping in -- her sister, her former fiancee, her friends... In fact, the resolution relies heavily on having those outsider views available, otherwise much of the climax flat-out wouldn't make sense. While I found the switch that far into the book to be slightly disconcerting, I can't imagine telling the story any other way. So be ready for that? show less

A Whole Lot of Morbid Fun and Sweetness

Lucy's life fell apart...her job, her wedding and then *bam* came the bus that sent her to ghost school. There is a lot of warm and funny for a book about death and ghosts. Lucy not so studiously learns the basics of haunting, so she can be sent back on "assignment" to set things right in the last place she'd want to be. Fortunately her feisty grandma "Naunie" comes along to keep her company and stir up the trouble pot. There is so much charm and good humor in this book. It's a story about normal, good-hearted kindness and love that doesn't stop for death. And there's a sweet, old dog named Tulip.