Sara Paretsky's ninth novel is one of only two which do not feature private investigator V I Warshawski. It is set in Chicago and focuses on homeless women and females raised by oppressive adults. Mara and Harriet Stonds are half sisters (same mother, different fathers), who lost their mother soon after Mara's birth and have been raised in luxury by their grandfather. He and his housekeeper are horrid people who control these girls by a perverted sort of behavior modification. Harriet has become a successful lawyer but has no emotions. Mara is a moody, rebellious teenager. Dr Stonds, the grandfather, is chief neurosurgeon and head of the psychiatric department at a large Chicago hospital. He believes in medication over psychoanalytic therapy and favors the use of psych wards as containment and punishment for unruly, abnormal people, including his granddaughter Mara, though he carefully excludes those with no health insurance. All of this is so Sara Paretsky. Hector, a resident at Midwest Hospital, who prefers therapy over medication, gets himself assigned to run a clinic at a homeless shelter and becomes embroiled in a volatile scene which eventually includes Mara, Harriet, Dr Stonds, an alcoholic opera diva, and a bevy of mentally ill homeless women. It all leads to drama, disaster and deliverance. Mara and Harriet discover the truth about their mother and grandfather. The various bad guys get what is coming to them. The strange and psychic Starr--homeless, wild, bigger than life--is like an avenging goddess. This is a big story, ambitious and sprawling. The writing is not great but Paretsky knows how to create tension and I was turning the pages, completely involved with the characters and their fates. The author's best characters were the homeless women: she made them real, demonstrating how they are invisible yet feared by society. Behind the imagery of the city's underbelly is a deeper layer of mythical spirituality which could have been developed more but possibly at the expense of the book's pace as a thriller. As much as I like her detective novels and V I Warshawski as a heroine, I hope that Sara Paretsky writes more novels outside the series. From Ghost Country, I got the idea that a deep well of learning and a vast understanding of human nature lies yet untapped in her psyche. Through her novels she is working out important issues about American society and I will read anything she writes.
This was a difficult book to get through, but one that made me stop and think about the haves and have nots throughout this country. There are several characters whose story we must remember until they meet together and join forces for a common good. There's Madeleine, a street person who believes rust coming out of the wall of a fancy hotel is the blood of the Virgin Mary; Starr, also a street person, who at times is erotic and other times performs magic that can bring the dead back to life; Dr. Stonds who is a well known neurosurgeon, head of the hospital, and who does not believe in psychotherapy (although his hospital has a department); Dr. Tammuz, the resident psychoterapist who is assigned to the homeless shelter and becomes involved with Madeleine, Starr and Mara - Dr. Stonds granddaughter whom he throws out of his mansion. There is also the head of the psychiatric unit who blames Dr. Tammuz for everything that goes wrong at the homeless shelter. Mara is on a quest to find out how her mother died, if in fact, she really did. Harriett, her sister - the one the grandfather adores - wants nothing to do with her rebellious sister, until she realizes why Mara is the way she is and then wants to help. This is a story about the rich and poor, those who live in mansions and those who live on the streets, those who believe in medicine and those who also believe in psychotherapy, and those who believe in others and those who do not. It is a long book (well, longer than the mysteries that I've been reading), but the length is necessary for character and plot development.
What do You think about Ghost Country (1999)?
Even though some of the characters are cardboard stereotypes (Dr. Strond, for one, Rafe Lowrie, for another) and the book turns mechanical toward the end, this newest Sara Paretsky novel kept me engaged. Paretsky draws on her ability to evoke a sense of place, something she did well in Bleeding Kansas with Lawrence, Kansas, but this time she's in more familiar territory in Chicago. She seems to have more of a feel for the Chicago underbelly and its denizens than she had for the upstanding Kansans she wrote about in Bleeding Kansas. It seems that Paretsky is trying out her wings as she leaves the mystery genre behind. A writer can away with the formulaic writing of the mystery, but that doesn't serve her well in a straight-forward novel. Unfortunately, Paretsky sometimes falls back on her formula, as well as on her liberal biases. (These biases match mine, so that's not a problem, but she often gets "preachy in her writing. That is a problem.) The riot in the church is particularly unbelievable--even the most fervent congregation wouldn't be driven to this extreme. Given everything, though, Paretsky has come up with some fully developed characters whose lives intersect and affect each other during the novel's duration. A side note to all my Goodreads friends: At last I have retired from teaching for good. I graded my final essays and tests and posted my final grades last week. Now I can get involved in reading some of the books I've saved for later and writing the poetry I've put on hold--that is, as soon as I get organized. Ha ha. This won't happen.
—Diane
I can't remember the last time I was so relieved to be through with a book. I almost never don't finish a book, but I came close with this tedious offering. I listened to it on tape and I admit that I could have been slightly affected by the awful reading by Melissa Manchester (the singer, apparently), but I don't think overly so. Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski novels aren't usually my favorite type of mysteries - they are PI books, where I prefer cozies, but I needed a book for the car. This was a
—Kim
I picked this up at the library under the impression (because I did not bother to really look) that it was another V. I. Warshawski novel … but it turns out to be outside of that series, one of the two non-Warshawski novels Paretsky has written, manifesting a different aspect of Paretsky’s talent. The flyleaf editor calls itr a parable for the millennium, and I guess that is apt, although it is one that is likely to be troublesome for most Christians. There are several different protagonists here, all of them being women from different walks of life and ages: a long past opera diva, who refuses to acknowledge that she is now a drunken has-been; her teenaged niece, who sees her aunt through rose-colored glasses; another teenager who is rebelling against her grandfather’s autocratic ways of life; the latter’s sister, who never rebels and is a shining example of American womanhood, on a fast track to become a full partner in her law firm; a trio of homeless women, one of whom becomes convinced that the rusty water leaking through a foundation wall of a hotel represented by the lawyer lady is the blood of the Virgin Mary … and an erotic homeless woman named Starr, who transforms all their lives. There is also a doctor named Hector, who is an intern at the grandfather’s hospital, who gets drawn into the lives of homeless women and finds he cannot get out again.
—JBradford
