ARA Review by Vijaybhai Bapodara of The Boy who Lived with Ghosts

[Vijaybhai Bapodara]

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

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3 out of 5 stars

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A disturbing though often hilarious memoir, told uniquely through the eyes of a young child. This is a coming-of-age story of a boy, growing up in 1960s England. As shocking as it is, this is a story of survival and a boy’s desperate attempts to save his mother from the madness and the horror.

This is an astounding first effort from John Mitchell. How he managed to take such a horrible life story and make it funny and unputdownable is nothing short of miraculous.

1960s Portsmouth, England, in the bowels of poverty, a little boy survives a drunk father, a depressed mother, and a paranoid-schizophrenic sister who physically abuses him every day and tries to kill herself over and over. His efforts to save his mother from depression are both hilarious and touching.

The author uses a common language that provides nostalgic images and a glimpse of the era she refers to. All of the poems seem approachable to the casual readers and some of them seem to touch their inner feelings.

The book contains a myriad of characters whose stories intertwine to bring out a colorful narrative. Each character connected differently with me. Frank’s resilience is worth noting.

So, I have appreciated these positive things because it is shown that how these problems come in life and how to make it easy and survive unwanted conditions. This book was laced with various positive threads. The book explores different themes such as friendship and loyalty. What I liked most about this book was the structure. Each chapter is told from the point of view of a character.

I have found that the language used in this story was quite difficult to understand everybody. Also, some content was not more needed, some words came like sex word was used. So in my opinion, it was also good if without this small part have not come. Also, its content was not in exact terms of the order, like when the people reading this book at that time the chance to create more complex issues. If you read one time this story so you did not understand all the things.


There were some errors in the book, so I don’t believe it was professionally edited. I give this book a rating of 3 out of 5 stars. I thought it was a well-written story with complex characters, but I felt the ending was a little rushed and there were some errors. For these reasons, I didn’t give the book a perfect score. While I understand that this may be the case, I urge anyone who is interested in spiritual content to read it. I should also mention that some parts need personal experiences to be understood. This book tackles several notions of life, human nature, and spirituality. So, if this sounds like something you want to know about, give it a read.

3/5.

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