The Dead Room, by Heather Graham

I read this book for two reasons, I love New York and am intrigued by the extraordinary - yes, that includes death and the different lines of thought that surround it. As with all things that we cannot have a shared experience of, death is one of humanity's biggest mysteries. It is surrounded by as many theories as myths. We cannot believe that there are people who are attuned to the dead because the experience is not evidential. We are living in an age of reason, of numbers and hard facts... the idea of ghosts surrounding us and of people being able to converse with them is to us absurd. And to add to that, the religious systems to which most are exposed had specific beliefs about the dead and the souls of the dead, and these do not include the notion that they haunting the scene of their deaths until a wrong is righted or a final wish granted.

Lauren was an interesting character. What lingers most in my mind was her exasperatingly irrational behavior- constantly putting herself in danger, never heeding warnings, pursuing inner and outer ghosts to her own near-peril. It is hard to admire such bravery and talent when it is accompanied by mere foolishness and irrational behavior. However, her story was an interesting one and the web of mystery of her love's death and disappearances of women in New York City is a well formulated story that kept me glued to the book. The plot and wealth of characters (though most were one dimensional) managed to highlight the stratified nature of our society, human determination to attain our own desires at all costs and the power that death has over us even while we live. Lauren did not fear death as most do and yet her obsession with the departed was far more disturbing to me than a healthy fear of things that go bump in the night. All in all, The Dead Room was an enthralling read.

SCORE: 3.5 Pears