‘Alice Sees Ghosts’ by Daisy Rockwell speaks of familiar ghosts

Picking up Daisy Rockwell’s ‘Alice Sees Ghosts’, one wondered what spooky world one would traverse in as the story runs through three generations of a dysfunctional family, spanning two continents.

Taking Alice’s point of view as the central thread, the reader is acquainted with the strange dreams that assailed her, making her wonder whether she was hallucinating since she came to stay in her ancestral home. Caught between the needs of two maternal figures — a bedridden grandmother Nannette, who had lost her ability to speak, and mother Clare, whose alcoholism and instability made her totally dependent after her father left the family — is it surprising that a young woman like Alice would be afflicted by a mental disorder?

With some homeschooling and no formal education, Alice had little chance of a professional life. Her life moved slowly amid the opulence of a sprawling mansion that was now on the verge of breaking down. Exploring the different corners of the house yielded strange surprises, like the discovery of expensive wine forgotten in the cellar, the rich library of books, and as she meandered through it aimlessly, she felt the presence of her dead grandfather.

His nightly visitations become regular and even her fiance, Ronit Roy, who is a psychiatrist, is intrigued. Together they embark on a journey to interpret the signs.

The late grandfather’s first marriage was to Violet — they had a cottage in Mussoorie; later, he married Nannette owing to family compulsions. He led a double life with two wives — one Indian and the other American — along with three children sired with the former, and three with the latter. This secret affair of his is revealed and there is a separation between him and Nannette, who later gets involved with one Jim Smith and gives birth to two daughters, but retains the Ramsey family name for them. That makes it a complicated layering of tales that Alice unravels as she searches for secrets kept in the dark for so long. She appears healed after she finds Jim Smith, her biological grandfather, and the Ramsey household becomes a happy place when Biju (Violet Ramsey’s son), Jim Smith, Ronit, Alice and a host of girls and dogs seem to animate the place now.

What is intriguing about contemporary ghost stories is that the spectre is no longer an ominous figure who causes harm to the human world, as they died unnatural deaths, dissatisfied with the life they had lived. The shifts that the genre of the supernatural has taken in recent times is in sync with psychological explanations to the phenomena which the novel indirectly alludes to.

Written in a racy style, the quaint charm of the protagonist in need of a knight in shining armour is the substance of fantasy in transnational times. The racial intermingling, playfully repudiating old notions of bloodlines, is certainly indicative of the postcolonial ethics that one celebrates in a globalised world where events in history, wars and conflicts are passingly mentioned, as what role do they really have in the mundane routine of daily life?

Rockwell knows how to tell a story, and the book being a mix of romance, fantasy, adventure, mystery tied together with the supernatural element in it, brings home the significance of family life and relationships that can be built. It instills hope and faith in values that are still universal in orientation.

Young and old alike would enjoy such a ghost story, figuring out the secret lives of those who now live only in one’s memory.

— The reviewer is professor of English at Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi