The Year of Past Things: A New Orleans Ghost Story

by M.A. Harper

Book Overview

Award-winning chef Phil Randazzo, owner of the trendy Tasso Restaurant in New Orleans, and his new wife, Michelle, are as happy as can be. Michelle's kids, Cam and Nicole, want Phil to be their new... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151011168
• ISBN13: 9780151011162
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 362 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 7.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Better Than THE DA VINCI CODE

I own everything Peter Straub and Neal Stephenson have ever written, so demand that all imaginative fiction I pick up similarly engages the brain. I don't do well with "speculative" thrillers featuring cloned Nazis or cloned Jesus or clones of any persuasion, written in middle-school prose about cardboard characters. But M. A. Harper has produced a keeper, the saga of a "guy's-guy" chef and football fan, married to a Tulane Anthropology professor whose dead first husband seems hellbent now on repo, both her body and soul. Mix in endangered kids, a genuine psychic, and apparitions so subtle they have to be real, and you get a page turner that'll keep you up past 4 a.m. as doomed Chef Phil tries to avert this big deadly dose of fate headed right up his nose. Ms. Harper's characters are people we know and even her ghost rings true. A muscular performance from an author who is probably also an experiencer.

Colorfully Spooky

Ghost stories are my favorite and M.A. Harper's "The Year of Past Things" captures life in its setting of Chestnut Street in uptown New Orleans with vivid details. While a paranormal experience could happen anyplace, Harper is able to draw the reader into this family's saga with such adept knowledge of supernatural happenings that you feel like no other place on earth has summoned something quite like this haunting Southern story. A seemingly ordinary marriage between a fairly recent widow of a famous Cajun musician and an award-winning divorced chef-restauranteur, each with children, suddenly surges forth like a rollercoaster ride of unexplainable occurences ranging from an indoor cat coming and going through closed windows to bloody ectoplasms floating through bedrooms. From page one forward, common everyday events start to unfold as not-so-common afterall, via a teasing, and at times taunting, myriad of extraordinary clues about the disturbing unidentified apparition who is lurking around this new household, desperately trying to somehow be set free by circumstances beyond anybody's human control. Harper is masterful at crafting this original and unique mystery tale and takes clever advantage of highlighting key holidays with ghostly happenings that subsequently keep building in intensity, culminating with a shocking scene never to forget during a Mardi Gras parade. The results per chapter satisfy and mystify - and at times horrify - and there are spooky surprises for even the best guessers-of-endings. This seasoned writer has a remarkable sense of detail, taking time to explicitly describe even the smallest observations so beautifully that it is hard to lose the image from one's imagination long after the last page has been enjoyed. You are invited by the author to feel like you are there. Entertaining, thought-provoking, and flavored with a nice twist of evil-spirit-world, this intriguing book explores the complexities of love, new relationships with "past things" cropping up when least desired, the confounding nature of kids growing up with step-parents and step-siblings under the same haunted roof, and descriptive local life and lingo in colorful superstitious New Orleans where just about anything eerie can happen as a backdrop on any given day or . . . dark midnight; all within the chilling confines of a poignant suspended state of the supernatural. Exquisite writing and delectable delivery! An A+ creative novel by a five star writer. Patty Lee, customer review

Intriguing story based on the desires of a ghostly invader

Take a New Orleans setting, add a ghost story, and tell of a late musician husband who haunts everyday objects such as the TV and you have an intriguing story based on the desires of a ghostly invader in M.A. Harper's riveting book, The Year Of Past Things. More casual ghost stories focus on the horror: it's to M.A. Harper's credit that the focus here is as much on mystery and psychological tension as on terror.

"I mean, I'm not frightened at all of what he was"

The Year of Past Things probably works better as a portrait of a couple trying to navigate through the murky emotional travails of their second marriage, rather than as a spooky, fog-filled ghost story. The story is an intricate tale of marital acceptance and change, and kudos goes to author M.A. Harper's for her decision to use the storm-drenched backdrop of New Orleans - the city certainly lends a sense of mystery and a tension-fuelled atmosphere to the story. But The Year of Past Things is often unwieldy and convoluted, with the themes of marital discord, spiritual enlightenment, memory, and mortality, all vying for literary and intellectual attention. The story focuses on the recently married Phillip Randazzo and Michelle Wickham. They're an attractive and successful New Orleans couple who have bought to their relationship children from other marriages. Both are flourishing in their respective careers - Phil is a restaurateur who runs and owns Tasso, a trendy Louisiana eatery on Magazine Street, and Michelle is an anthropology professor, of late a widow, and the mother of six year-old Nicole and thirteen year old Cam. Michelle, however, remains haunted by her first marriage, to A.P. Savoie, a Cajun artist and musician who was her high school sweetheart and the only true love of her life. Their lives were full of violence, drug abuse, and alcoholism, but their marriage managed to survive, until a drunk driver accidentally killed Savoie. Michelle readily admits to Cam that Phillip will never be able to replace Savoie, but she met Phil at such a low point in her life, when she was lonely and miserable and needed a relationship, that she sort of just "teamed up" with Phil. But Michelle is having problems letting go of Savoie and cannot readily embrace Phil. And Phil is steadily becoming jealous of the dead man, and is beginning to resent Michelle. The past and present inexorably collide when Savoie's spirit begins to manifest itself from varying stages in his tormented past life. Both Michelle and Phil are forced to confront not only the possible existence of the spiritual world, but also their own shortcomings as potential long-term partners. Harper, to her credit employs Savoie's ghost judiciously, often as disparate, disconnected images that appear for just one moment. Phil sees him first and tries to explain him away as a stressful mental apparition. But Savoie's messages and warnings begin to appear in the unlikeliest of places - on television, and on one of Cam's video games. As the plot progresses, these warning signs from beyond the grave hint that Phil, Michelle, and the kids might be in some kind of danger. There's no doubt that Ms. Harper is a competent writer, and she certainly knows how to write realistic, enlightening dialogue; her ability to portray fully rounded and three dimensional characters is also admirable, but so often the author gets sidetracked by weak descriptions of the natural world, and preoccupied with the de

Great Ghost Story

Here is a book with everything: good food (prepared lovingly) troubled relationships (resolved nicely), romance, troubled teens and pre-, adventure, a cameo appearance by Anne Rice, New Orleans, adventure, and an ambiguous ghost. Loved it! Merle Kessler