SOJALS rating:

Mediocre (2/5)

I first read this in August 1996.

Sometime after World War II, magic started seeping into the world. Spells and charms have become increasingly effective, zombies and ghosts walk the Earth.

Dante Ratkay has grown into a charming but aimless adult. He knows that there is some strong power within him, but he will not acknowledge it. He prefers to live with his blind spots. In fact his whole, rather unusual, family have their common blind spots.

Still, matters come to head when his half-brother, Jet, uncovers Dante's corpse back at the family home. Now Dante really must face up to reality, and his family must acknowledge their history.

This is a little gem of a book. Not my sort of stuff normally, but I rather enjoyed it. Nice writing, the matter-of-fact style is very effective at maintaining the spooky, sometimes ghastly, atmosphere. For example, the reference to the Nazi concentration camps hits harder because of the unemotional description. On a completely different note, I loved the elegant and poetic solution to Laura's Feng Shui problem on what to do with Mr Hudson's house. In fact, I rather liked Laura.