ARA Review by LibraryAmbler of The Boy who Lived with Ghosts

[LibraryAmbler]

[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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The Boy Who Lived with Ghosts is a creative nonfiction memoir that follows a young John Mitchell’s personal journey through a turbulent upbringing full of family drama and madness. While everything that happens in the book is of a relatively serious nature, the style and delivery is often lighthearted and even humorous.

Told through the lens of a young boy, Mitchell is able to lean into the more fantastical/horrifying aspects of his childhood. When the lights go out, the darkness truly comes alive. There are screaming ghosts in the attic and phantoms with bulging eyes that roam the house at night. There are creepy dripping noises and suffocating spaces that no child would ever want to enter.

I believe that the creative choice to tell the story this way is what makes The Boy Who Lived with Ghosts so poignant and compelling. If this were to be a straight-laced memoir done in a more journalistic style, the reader would likely feel safely removed from the course of events. The audience might understand the story more clearly but less viscerally. They wouldn’t feel the fear that young Mitchell felt while being locked in the cellar by his sister or the uncertainty that stitched together his every waking hour as his father abandoned him and his mother fought to keep both her family and her sanity together.

The family members, friends, and neighbors that pop up throughout the book are some of the most colorful and engaging characters I’ve seen in a book (any book) in a long time. There’s a wacky grandmother, a crazy “aunt,” an embellishing boyhood friend, and a heartbreakingly tragic but well-meaning father. In fact, Mitchell’s relationship with his father is one of the saddest aspects of the story.

An alcoholic who abandons his family, the father figure here is so tragic because of how much he obviously loves his family. He’s not the stereotypical scum-bag wife-beater you’d expect, but something closer to a child himself, dedicated to nothing but having fun and avoiding responsibility at every possible turn.

There’s a truly heartbreaking scene where, while idolizing his father, the narrator says,

“When I am almost a teenager, I will drink shandy. And when I’m a grown-up, I will drink beer and whisky like my dad. And I will go to see a man about a dog and never come back.”

The true backbone of the book however is the narrator’s relationship with his sister. Constantly abusive and self-destructive, his sister Margueretta beats him, yells at him, and slowly succumbs to the powerful grip of mental illness throughout the course of the memoir. As a reader, I often felt frustration and even a sort of irrational hatred for her as her behavior became worse and worse. But as the story progresses and Mitchell ages, my feelings, along with the narrator’s, matured until comprehension finally began to take hold and I was able to see how truly troubled she was.

This slow progression is intentional, I believe (what child isn’t constantly frustrated by their siblings) and it is a testament to Mitchell’s storytelling ability that he is able to drag any reader—no matter the age—back to their most childish feelings and judgments.

The Boy Who Lived with Ghosts is funny, heartbreaking, and ultimately tragic but not wholly so. It is tragic in the way that life is tragic. People eventually die, but the time spent with them is something to be cherished, however troubled that relationship might be. Mitchell is a truly skilled storyteller who is able to explore the nuances of growing up in a way that is both subtle and visceral, and the fact that he is able to do it all while speaking with the voice of a child is nothing short of a miracle. I give The Boy Who Lived with Ghosts by John Mitchell 5 out of 5 stars.

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