The Night Country

As the first anniversary of their deaths in a Halloween car crash approaches, the ghosts of three teenagers drift through the suburban town of Avon, Connecticut. They are Toe, Danielle, and Marcoe. The crash involved no drugs or alcohol. They were driving too fast on a country road, lost control on a blind curve, and sailed into a tree. Tim and Kyle were also in the car. Danielle was sitting in Tim's lap in the backseat of the car and cushioned the impact. She was catapulted through the windshield but he walked away unharmed. Kyle was found wandering in the woods, his face crushed and his brain severely damaged. Now released from the hospital, his every action is strictly ordered by routines that allow him to function at the special school he attends and at the grocery store where he works alongside Tim.

O'Nan's novel is the most melancholy ghost story I have ever read. His meticulous attention to detail, always graceful and never tedious, places us in Avon, a suburb that retains its original downtown shopping district but has become the familiar sprawl of strip shopping centers and upscale residential communities for commuters into Hartford and beyond. Toe, Danielle, and Marcoe remain the angsty teenagers there were in life, their banter ranging from good-natured ribbing to bickering with a biting edge. As O'Nan follows them for a day and a night we learn the sad parameters of their ghostly existence. They are tied to the people who remember them, but since their death was only a year ago, that gives them considerable if joyless freedom to roam their hometown. (In one brief scene, we encounter the ghosts of two small girls who died years ago. They can only stand by the curving road and the tree that took their lives. The girls' parents have moved away and Avon residents only think of them when they see that location. Few people can remember their names.) The trio of friends spend most of their time with Tim but also observe Kyle's mom, a woman who struggles to come to terms with a life that will now be devoted to the care of her damaged child. Toe, Danielle, and Marcoe are also aware of a spirit they call The Real Kyle, but he exists on a different plane than they and there is no communication. And then there is Brooks, a third generation townie whose life and career on the Avon police force is falling into ruin. He was the first responder on the scene of the accident, but there is a question hanging over his involvement that fuels much of the story.

Tim plans to commemorate the anniversary of the accident with his own suicide, and there is every indication that he will take what is left of Kyle with him. His friends' ghosts of can only watch this situation unfold over the course of the day, and although this may not be O'Nan's intention, in their combination of omnipresence and powerlessness they are like nothing so much as the readers of a novel. In this case we readers are in O'Nan's expert hands, but he leads us down dark, sad roads where only his empathy and the assuredness of his vision make the journey bearable.