Ghostwalk

Ghostwalk
Rebecca Scott
2007
322 pages

Have I ever mentioned I’m not a science person? Well, I’m not. It was my least favorite subject…because I think it’s boring and I don’t understand most of it. And maybe just a little bit because all of my high school science teachers were scary.

I bring this up (my disinterest in science, not the scary teachers part) because there are whole sections of Ghostwalk about optics and light and neuroscience and metaphysics, whateverthehell that is. I feel obligated to offer that up, you know, as sort of a public service announcement. Because reading about that stuff made me want to poke myself in the eye. Oh wait no. There was a very graphic description of Isaac Newton doing that very same thing (seriously…he poked himself in the eye with a wooden needle thingy to see how it affected his vision…I told you scientists were scary!!). Since I’m no Isaac Newton, for a variety of reasons, there was no poking of the eye. There were, however, naps.

Anyhoosie, besides a bunch of science-y stuff, this book is also about a mystery. See, there’s this writer. She’s writing a book on Isaac Newton the eye-poker and his alchemy habit. Then she dies. Mysteriously. So her son hires his former lover to finish the book. Said former lover is also the narrator. She uncovers secrets, falls back into bed with her former lover who is married with kids, finishes the book, uncovers more secrets, and has mysterious woo-woo things happen to her. And by the way, the woo-woo stuff works in this book, as opposed to it not working in the last book I read.

So, a good, if convoluted, mystery that just so happens to be filled with science gobbledygook and the occasional, memorable eye-poking scene. Seriously, it still gives me goose bumps to think of Isaac sticking a wooden needle into his eye. I don’t remember squat about what all he’s famous for, but I do remember that. I told you I wasn’t a science person.