ARA Review by Meversgerd of The Boy who Lived with Ghosts

[Meversgerd]

[Following is an OnlineBookClub.org ARA Review of the book, The Boy who Lived with Ghosts.]

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5 out of 5 stars

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Told from a young boy living in squalor, The Boy Who Lived with Ghosts [i/] is a suspenseful memoir that conveys what it's like growing up during the most influential years of one's life. His journey to understanding begins in England's slums during the 1960s, where food, comfort, and cleanliness are rare commodities. He is a young boy who takes on an adult's responsibilities while surrounded by addiction, poverty, and mental illness. But even under those stringent circumstances, his dysfunctional family's drama adds horror, suspense, and humor to this novel.


Through his young life's most influential years, the story follows John Mitchell, ranging from five to thirteen. He perceives and interprets everything he encounters through the mind of a child. For example, though his older sister beats him daily, he doesn't connect her obsessive cruelty or crazy rantings of an abnormal mind. Instead, like all bullied children, he fantasizes about one day doing the pummeling. What fails to penetrate his innocent mind but raises a red flag for us is she is severely mentally ill. Despite dealing with his older sister's brutality, John, throughout the Memoir, continues to remain optimistic about his future.


At the age of eight, John's alcoholic father leaves the family, but his father's love never deteriorates. His mother and Nana, on numerous occasions, drop facts about the man who, one day, up and left. John hears terrible things about his father, yet when it comes to reading John's eight-year-old introspections, nothing matters except his father's return. John doesn't put together that his father drank away all their money, causing the conditions in which they lived. And despite how smart a student he is, his clothes' state determines the positive or mostly negative treatment of him outside his home.


School proved difficult for John. Not because of his grades, which were above average, but because he couldn't afford the uniform. Teachers and other students looked down on him. Did that bother John? Well, a little. But not enough to make money for new clothes. He did make money, though, but not for food or new clothing. Mitchell believed that the black floor made his mother sad. Between beatings, painful hunger, and dealing with the ghosts keeping him up at night, John bought colorful tiles on clearance to make his mother smile.


And what about those ghosts living with him? Hearing the devil's dripping sound emanating from the darkest depths of the basement where, at times, his older sister kept him locked up. Nightly screams that fell upon him from the door to the attic above his bed. The truth is more frightening than what John imagines, cultivated from his Nana and other old family members' stories about God, devil, and demons. The truth about mental illness, coupled with addiction, is worse than any made-up horror story.


I give this Memoir a 5 out of 5 stars for its unique juvenile perspective. I found reading this horrific story through a child's perception, both suspenseful and challenging to my maternal instincts. Getting through the horrors, though amusing as he made them out to be, I looked forward to the end, hoping there was a bright light at the end of the book.

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