Spooky Little Girl

My best friend Lola gave me The Idiot's Girl's Adventure Club for my birthday not long after it came out knowing I loved books with such a devotion, she's constantly surprised I don't have a Silence of the Lambs altar in my back closet for all books in general. I didn't have the heart to tell her I'd read the book twice already. Instead I took this as a sign that obviously we were meant to be friends forever because look- out of all books everywhere she bought me the best of the best.

In general Laurie Notaro rocks. Usually she dishes out non-fiction wisdom between laying on suburban lawns because alcohol induced spins have reduced her ability to walk home or talking about living in Arizona's ghetto  (hey we all can't have rich parents). But her newest and latest Spooky Little Girl is just a little bit different.

Back of the Book
Death is what happens while you’re busy making other plans. Coming home from a Hawaiian vacation with her best girlfriends, Lucy Fisher is stunned to find everything she owns tossed out on her front lawn, the locks changed, and her fiancé’s phone disconnected—plus she’s just lost her job. With her world spinning wildly out of her control, Lucy decides to make a new start and moves upstate to live with her sister and nephew. But then things take an even more dramatic turn: A fatal encounter with public transportation lands Lucy not in the hereafter but in the nearly hereafter. She’s back in school, learning the parameters of spooking and how to become a successful spirit in order to complete a ghostly assignment. If Lucy succeeds, she’s guaranteed a spot in the next level of the afterlife—but until then, she’s stuck as a ghost in the last place she would ever want to be.   

My Thoughts
Sure I already like her writing but I won't lie, I was a little concerned with how well she would transition into fiction. Not all writer's do it well. Although sometimes you have to wonder just how much of Augusten Burroughs's books are just a bit fictionalized. Come one- no one can have that bad of a childhood. But hey what do I know? Anyhoo- I had nothing to worry about. Spooky Little Girl is fantastic. As the description alludes- Lucy Fisher is having one hell of a week. She comes home from what is supposed to be a pre-wedding girlfriend's weekend in Hawaii only to discover all of her belongings on the front lawn and her now ex-fiancé refusing to answer the phone. She can't get to her dog and then she gets fired from work.

But icing on the cake was getting flattened like a pancake by the #4 cross-town bus. (Actually I can't remember if it was the #4 or not I don't have the book in front of me). Such a wild set of circumstances yet each could happen to anyone. As a ghost she's paired up with her Grammy and turned loose at her ex's house. She must complete her life's to-do list or end up going into the light (not as happy a place as we're taught to believe).

It's cute and fun and a great way to waste a couple of hours. Settle yourself in the corner bench at Chuck E. Cheeses. Dole out those tokens and lose yourself in her world for awhile. Don't worry no one wants those kids of yours.