Book Review : ‘Ghost Waves’--Fear, Love and Loathing in a Time Warp

Ghost Waves by James McManus Grove Press: $18.95, 320 pages)

”. . . What particle physicist and artists both do is track the transformations between physical reality and our inner experience. OK?”

OK. Why not? The material thesis of this book exists as a course of undergraduate lectures (Aesthetics and Physics) given at The School of the Art Institute. The lecturer/teacher/author here is always coming in to make the action a little more clear: “If ghost waves exist, things could move backward in time, and vice versa.” OK.

Layered Time

Once you’ve got that settled--that we’re not dealing with chronological, easily understood time, but instead with layered time, and the concept of matter/anti-matter, the plot and structure of “Ghost Waves” falls into place pretty easily. This novel is a nice combination of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet,” Carol Hill’s “Eleven Million Mile High Dancer,” Greg Easterbrook’s “This Magic Moment,” and Jonathan Franzen’s current urban thriller, “The Twenty-Seventh City.”

The plot here is pure Hamlet. Linda Krajacik, a teen-aged art student at the Chicago institute, is outraged when her still beautiful mother, Maggie, marries Richard Baum, a tasteless materialistic dweeb who trades wheat futures at the Chicago Exchange and makes as much as $3 million in one morning. No, Richard Baum did not murder Linda’s real father. He, Mike Krajacik, a ghost who obsessively keeps appearing and dripping blood all over the Baums’ luxury loft, died years ago, an unsung, unhonored dog soldier in Vietnam. But surely Baum’s life makes a mockery of Mike Krajacik’s death.

Lusting After Linda

Linda, unwanted stepdaughter of Richard Baum, blames her mother for her weakness and finally settling just for money. Baum himself lusts after Linda, and, in the first part of this novel, manages to own her, just as certainly and finitely as he owns his loft, his Porsche and so on. Linda, just a girl, just an artist, tries to think of suitable revenge. But she has her own life to lead. What could happen here, the author seems to suggest, is that Linda’s life alone, a life of examined art, a life that pays attention to “ghost waves” and acts upon them, might be enough to defeat Baum’s disgusting mindlessness, lust, greed and so on.

The novel moves forward. After the marriage, Linda, Maggie and Baum go for a “honeymoon” to Paris, staying at the Crillon. Maggie is seduced by the pure materialistic ease of her new life; Linda, operating on another whole wave length, goes out to the Louvre to check out Gericault’s “The Raft of the Medusa”: “Because live and upclose it was wild . Crashing green waves, outstretched hands, desperation: a Board of Trade pit only windier, wetter . . . a camouflage pattern when she squinted. . . .”

The Artist’s Life

Camouflage, what the ghost of her dad wears when he appears to her in dreams and visions. Linda goes home to Chicago, takes up with an artist, lives an artist’s life. Falls in love. Takes her own emotional chances. Gets a job. Loses it. Is followed by one of Baum’s detectives. Loses him. Is found by him again. . . .

All of this plot is, in a sense, secondary to the thesis that time exists in a non-chronological wave--that the future is forever plunging back to the past, and vice versa. The fun of the novel is also extraneous to the plot: All pleasure here comes from the author’s mastery of urban diversions, urban dialogue; the differences in desires and language between a teen-aged girl, her beautiful mom, and a future-trading sleazeball who, chronologically, finds himself midway between them.

“Ghost Waves” is good, but it doesn’t have a decent ending. I suppose that would go against the thesis here, but it still leaves the reader feeling . . . grumpy, swindled on the cosmic board of exchange.