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From New York Times bestselling author Tom Perrotta, hailed by critics as “the Steinbeck of Suburbia” (Time), “our Balzac of the burbs” (Chicago Sun-Times), and “an American Chekhov” (The New York Times), comes a gripping and darkly nostalgic tale about a tumultuous summer in 1970s suburban New Jersey, from the perspective of a middle-aged writer, looking back on a series of events that changed his life—and the story he finally has the courage to tell.
Jimmy Perrini lives in 1970s suburban New Jersey, a few miles from Manhattan, but a world apart. At the end of eighth grade, after tragedy strikes, Jimmy finds himself lost in a fog of grief that alienates him from friends and family, drifting instead into troubling friendships with two older teenagers: one a notorious local burnout with a fast car, an endless supply of weed, and a shaky grasp of reality; the other a smart, eccentric girl, whom Jimmy finds himself drawn to as they become entranced by her Ouija board, which may just offer the only salve to their grief.
As a fateful public drama unfolds, Jimmy is torn between the occult beyond and the cold realities of the place he has called home. Narrated by a much older Jimmy, a literary-turned-commercial novelist, Ghost Town reveals how the past haunts the present—the way our ghosts are always with us, even when we think we’ve left them behind.
Select Reviews
“Tom Perrotta rouses the sleeping dogs of 1970s suburbia with tender complexity. Ghost Town is a time capsule dug up behind the old high school—an artifact of a family navigating loss in a nation at the crossroads.” —Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage
“To readers who have not yet had the pleasure of reading Tom Perrotta’s books, Ghost Town is a beautiful introduction. If Perrotta has written grief before, though, as in The Leftovers, he has never written it like this—as pure and clean as a wish, or a prayer. I wept, because I understood. If you have lost someone you love, you will, too.” —Emma Straub, author of This Time Tomorrow
“Ghost Town is a brilliant, evocative novel, at once a page-turning ghost story, and a deeply moving exploration of grief. Tom Perrotta’s characters are people you know instantly, and the town he’s created feels like the place you grew up. I couldn’t put it down and after finishing it, I couldn’t escape the haunting nostalgia of my own memories.” —Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins