Paper Ghosts by Julia Heaberlin

Author : Julia Heaberlin
Title : Paper Ghosts
Published : 2018
Publisher : Penguin
Pages : 400
Genre : Mystery / Thriller

     Carl Louis Feldman is an old man who was once a celebrated photographer. That was before he was tried for the murder of a young woman and acquitted. before his admission to a care home for dementia. Now his daughter has come to see him, to take him on a trip. Only she's not his daughter and, if she has her way, he's not coming back. Because Carl's past has finally caught up with him. The young woman driving the car is convinced her passenger is guilty, and that he's killed, other young women. Including her sister Rachel. Now they're following the trail of his photographs, his clues, his alleged crimes. To see if he remembers any of it. Confesses to any of it. 

     I had seen this book countless times before I decide to pick a copy up and that was at the behest of a friend. It wasn't because I thought it would be a bad book but my to be read pile is so big that I have become careful about what I add to it. A lot more happens in this book than I had been expecting, It goes far beyond your usual game of cat and mouse. This is about two people locked together in a search for the truth. But who's truth because a big question that runs through the book. Grace Is someone we can all identify with, who wouldn't want to find out what happened to there sister. When someone is ripped from your life all you can hope for is answers. She will go to any length to find this out even if she risks losing her self in the process. 

     As I got to learn about Carl I was left with mixed feeling towards him. He is someone who we are supposed to hate, he is, after all, a potential serial killer. But he is also a man suffering from dementia, whose sense of self is slipping away from him and whose memory's may not always be trusted. How much of what he tells Grace and in turn us is really what took place all those years ago. It is within this fraught dynamic that most of the story takes place. The two bounce off each other in ever more violent ways, but not in a physical way. This story is about how life can so often be so unfair and despite all we wish for it has a nasty way of ripping us to pieces.

    There is something very hypnotic about the story, I couldn't bring myself to pull away from these two. It feels like some old memory that floats about in the back of your mind. It's a weird word to use with this book but there is an odd sense of nostalgia wrapped up in these words. It's a hard one to explain, maybe because it feels like so much of it takes place in the past. In the hunt for the truth, they must both look back. Her writing style has a lot to do with this, it flows along at a slow pace but every now and again it twists back on its self or takes a sharp right turn and throws you through a loop. It takes a deep hard look at the obsessions that drive people, for some this can lead them to greatness. But for others, it takes you down a very deep and dark path. The book brings up so many questions that I wasn't expecting and left me with a lot of strange feelings towards them. None of this is a bad thing it allows this book to move past the genre it has been pegged in. When it comes to the final few chapters and going a long way to wrapping everything up for them I was left with a sadness that took me by surprise.  There is a certain amount of melancholy that reverberates through the pages and before you know it has seeped into you as the reader.  I ended up feeling so much for these two even someone you are supposed to hate.

     Paper Ghosts is a book of many surprises it coils its self around you and leaves you questioning everything you have experienced.  For me, it was like looking at a series of old fade black and white photographs trying to pieces together a person's life, much like its title. Sometimes a name fits so perfectly you could not imagine anything else.