Ghost of a Marriage by Richard Dansky

​     This book is a prime example of a slow and not especially exciting tory being saved and elevated by above average writing. And how can a story about ghosts be slow and not that exciting you might ask? Fair question. The answer is in the ingredients.
      Take a sad unraveled marriage on its last legs – or not even, just the last couple of weeks while the wife who is leaving her husband is waiting for her apartment lease to begin. Take a sad sack of a man who is desperately clinging to a completely unrealistic idea of them still working it out and getting back together – that’s Gary, our protagonist. Take a haunting done by ghosts of Gary and his wife’s younger selves. And proceeded slowly.
      That’s basically it. Gary’s wife is so thoroughly unpleasant, you’d think he’d be doing cartwheels at her leaving…his moping is completely unreasonable. She leaves him their house that he loves and Frannie, his beloved feline companion. Life ought to be gravy, but Gary’s too hung up on his soon to be ex-wife to recognize it.
      Gary’s a writer who hasn’t written in ages. He has a demanding job in a video game company that eats up most of his time. He eats tons of crappy takeout. He has strikingly devoted friends…seriously, his friends in this book, especially James and Ellie are inordinately (conspicuously) solicitous. And all this time Gary gives nothing back to his friends, not even the truth about his divorce for the longest time, because of his stupid ideas of reconciliation.
     And the ghosts in this story are as weirdly mopey and hung up on lurv as Gary, albeit they are much more assertive and aggressive.
      In the end, the entire production amounts to something like an unconventional marriage therapy, or, more accurately, divorce therapy. And it does take its time getting there and yet…
       And yet…it was surprisingly engaging. The author has a knack for writing the quotidian and even Gary in all his sad sack ways is quite compelling as a lead. So, I enjoyed it. Though readers looking for scares ghost fiction usually promises might want to adjust their expectations for  more of a slow relationship drama. Thanks Netgalley.