Ghost Lights: A Novel

Ghost Lights: A Novel

<p><strong>“Surreal, darkly hilarious and profound.”—<em>San Francisco Chronicle</em></strong></p><em>Ghost Lights</em> stars an IRS bureaucrat named Hal—a man baffled by his wife’s obsession with her young employer, T., and haunted by the accident that paralyzed his daughter, Casey. In a moment of drunken heroism, Hal embarks on a quest to find T.—the protagonist of Lydia Millet’s much-lauded novel <em>How the Dead Dream</em>—who has vanished in a jungle. On his trip to Central America, Hal embroils himself in a surreal tropical adventure, descending into strange and unpredictable terrain (and an unexpected affair with a beguiling German woman).<br /><br /><em>Ghost Lights</em> is Millet at her best—beautifully written, engaging, full of dead-on insights into the heartbreaking devotion of parenthood and the charismatic oddity of human behavior. The book draws us into a darkly humorous, sometimes off-kilter world where bonds of affection remain a reliable magnetic north. <em>Ghost Lights</em> is a startling, comic, and surprisingly philosophical story.