Breathing Out The Ghost

Back in November I took a request to write a book review. My first thought was, How cool! Someone actually wants me to read their book and offer my opinion. Then I thought, what the hell do I know about writing a book review? My final thought was, Why not? I like to read and I always have an opinion on something, even if I don’t know what I’m shooting my mouth off about. So I said yes, making certain that the requester knew I had never done such a thing before. It’s always best to admit your ignorance up front and center, so everyone knows exactly where you stand. A week or so later a book arrived in my mailbox.

I love books. The texture of them, the scent of them, and most of all, the possibilities of them. When you first hold that new book in your hand, the potential of the story has yet to be revealed. The characters just waiting to share their voices. So it was with anticipation that I began Breathing Out The Ghost, by Kirk Curnutt.

Colin St. Clair is lost and loosing ground, stoked on speed and guilt and misery, as he searches for his kidnapped son A.J. at every missing child location he can reach. Being pulled along the path of destruction in Colin’s wake is Robert Heim, an ex-private investigator who cannot break the troubled tie between himself and Colin. Along the way they meet Sis Pruitt, a woman living with the ghost of her dead daughter, murdered years before. This meeting, amidst the search for another missing child, is where Colin, Heim and Sis find the beginning of their lives. If they can face the grief, misery and loss to breath out their ghosts.

This is a dark disturbing book. The characters are troubled and lost, all of them, due to circumstances both beyond their control and of their making. They left me feeling unsettled in ways I can’t fully describe and yet I was an eager voyeur as their paths unraveled on the pages before me. Each one is living with haunting memories that they cannot bear to view head on, in the light of day. Bearing witness to such grief makes this an emotionally difficult book to read. I could feel Colin’s despair, the sense of being adrift with little sense of direction and not caring. Heim’s frustration with his, and Colin’s, behavior is keen but there is resignation as he carried out the next task in his self-appointed role as Colin’s keeper. I wanted to rail at Sis’s stoic demeanor and push her to face her memories, even as I accepted the reasons for shutting down and holding them in close. I could identify with Colin’s slide into despair and darkness, even as I found it inexcusable and self-indulgent as he left his wife and daughter behind. He doesn’t ask for sympathy, and doesn’t deserve it. Sis’s strength is her deepest fracture, brittle and sharp, scraping at everyone around her. Her pain and grief are less palpable than Colin’s, perhaps dulled with time, but very real and just as driving. Heim was the hardest one for me to understand. Why he held such a deep need to pull Colin back from the brink of destruction time and again, despite the further erosion of his own life’s framework as he did so, was difficult to fully grasp.

At times I thought I wouldn’t be able to finish Breathing Out The Ghost, but Curnutt’s writing pulled me back, to follow along to the very end. His way of telling this tale is subtle, the nuances of emotion and struggle compelling me to sit, observe and, most importantly, feel . Maybe I wouldn’t have been so affected, so disturbed by these people and their ghosts, as well as the living grief of Colin and Sis, if I wasn't still struggling with the loss of my parents and nephew. But written as they were by Kirk Curnutt, their stories resonated with me, leaving me thoughtful, yet oddly uncomfortable among the echoes of their pain. It’s hard to say I enjoyed this book when it so strongly evoked my own memories of loss and grief. While not normally the type of novel I would pick up for casual reading, Breathing Out The Ghost wove in and around my thoughts and emotions, holding me as captive to it as Colin, Heim and Sis were to their own ghosts. And that is what a good book is meant to do.


P.S. Kirk has agreed to write a guest post about Breathing Out The Ghost. Check back for that in a day or so. I'm really excited about this! Plus, he has another book coming out this year. I know I'm going to buy it.

*Bookcover image courtesy of River City Publishing