“It’s supposed to be a time when you’re about to embark on your adult life, but for many young people, that springboard looks more like a precipice.”

Ghosts of Harvard is a patchwork of a novel. While the summary seems to promise more of thriller/academia type of book (I personally would not recommend this to those who enjoy campus novels or dark academia), what we do get is a mishmash of genres and storylines: to start with we have a moving family drama that examines the realities of caring for someone with a mental illness, then we head into the supernatural combined with the type of amateur investigation that is all the rage in domestic thrillers (someone you know has done something bad), before culminating in a melodramatic final act.

Francesca Serritella strikingly renders the setting of Harvard. Sadly however her protagonist’s investigation into her brother’s time there takes the centre-stage, so that Cadence’s studies and interactions with other students receive limited attention only. Nevertheless Serritella certainly knows Harvard, and she demonstrates her knowledge of its history, architecture, and traditions in a very compelling and evocative way.
After her brother’s suicide Cadence is obviously overwhelmed. Eric was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia while studying at Harvard so Cadence does feel to a certain extent haunted. Hoping that being at Harvard will somehow bring her closer to her brother, she soon begins to suspect that her brother was hiding something. As she becomes obsessed with her brother’s past, she begins to hear ‘voices’. What follows is a story that has the trappings of most domestic thrillers, the only difference being the academic backdrop.

The third person narration distances us from Cadence, so that much of her personality remains unseen. We know of her troubled relationship with her mother but we never truly delve into Cadence’s sense of self. She makes many nonsensical decisions for ‘plot’ reasons, and I can’t say that she ever did or said anything remotely remarkable or moving. Perhaps I would have sympathised more with her if she had at any point had an introspective moment. She briefly questions herself only when she’s worried that the voices she’s hearing are a figment of her imagination or a sign that she too may suffer from schizophrenia. She forms superficial friendships with her roommates and a guy who shares one of her classes, but for the most part she only comes into contact with individuals who are directly connected to her brother and his secret. Speaking of Eric’s friends, it was weird that Cadence only speaks to his best friend once. Although Cadence grows close to one of her brother’s peers, I never believed that she cared for the ‘living’ people she encounters at Harvard. She becomes somewhat chummy with the three ghosts who keep talking to her in her head, and who unsurprisingly help her in her investigation.
Throughout the course of Cadence’s ‘investigation’ we get snippets from her past that focus on her family life and her bond with Eric. These were easily my favourite parts of the novel. These scenes, although painful, possessed a genuine quality that made them much more poignant that the ones that take place at Harvard.

“Simple narratives were easier to tell, to teach, to understand, to remember. The lie endures for generations, while the truth dies with its victims. But what were the consequences?”

Serritella’s writing was absorbing and I generally enjoyed her reflections on family, mental health, grief, and Harvard’s history.
While part of me was happy that the novel didn’t drag on the ‘are the voice real or not’, ultimately I wasn’t all that taken by the novel’s execution: it veers into exaggerated territories that are punctuated by flashy twists. What could have been a compassionate exploration of grief and of loving someone who suffers from a mental illness is weighed down by unnecessary thriller-esque melodrama. The supernatural element would have been a lot more ‘haunting’ if it hadn’t been so cheesily predictable. While I appreciated the novel’s commentary on academia/educational institutions, and the nuanced portrayal of Eric’s mental illness as well as the realistic depiction of the stigma and discrimination against mental health, I was underwhelmed by the storyline and finale.

Specific plot points/scenes that were unconvincing/clichéd:

➜ The prologue. I’m tired of these prologues that ‘tease’ a possible death that is to come. The novel’s first chapters were compelling enough that they did not require such a gimmicky opening.

➜ Cadence’s first interaction with her roommate was jarring: “I’m Ranjoo, do you hate me already?”
“Only for those abs.” Who says that? Maybe if we had a better grasp of Cadence’s personality I could have believed that she would say something alongs these lines.

➜ (view spoiler)[A cashier who works at the Science Center food court recognises Cadence: “You gotta brother who goes here, don’t you! […] The sushi, the total discombobulation, just like him. […] But the red hair’s the giveaway. You’re a dead ringer.” Yet the cashier doesn’t know that Eric is death…which is weird since he committed suicide on campus, and later on we are told that everyone who works/studies there was aware of the death of a student. (hide spoiler)]

➜ Nikos. (view spoiler)[Eric’s alleged friend. From his first appearance I knew his ‘game’. Why do characters with British accents or Greek ancestry have to be such stereotypes?! Cadence is supposed to be a smart girl and yet she doesn’t pick up on Niko’s questionable behaviour/responses: “And that was a great game, you know, really close, that’s how I like it, I like the win to mean something.” And he says this before he’s ‘unmasked’. Also I tend to dislike it when one character is made into a psychopath of sorts who says villainy stuff like: “Since my freshman year, beating Eric Archer was my raison d’être”. Good God. (hide spoiler)]

➜ The ghosts. (view spoiler)[I’m not a fan of ‘let’s explain the supernatural with fake science’, and I didn’t buy the Cadence’s explanation behind the voices from the past ‘phenomena’. Why Cadence of all people should hear them? And why these three ghosts? The whole ghost-storyline was very ‘quid-pro-quo’ (the ghosts help Cadence, Cadence helps the ghosts). And don’t even get me started on the weird romance (if we can call it that?) that Cadence develops with that one ghost. That sex scene seemed more appropriated to Ghost (1990). (hide spoiler)]

➜ Prokop. (view spoiler)[She’s Russian so she just had to be a cold-hearted manipulative spy. And what was the deal with this ‘spy’ storyline? It felt so out of place. (hide spoiler)]

➜ Eric. (view spoiler)[While I generally found him to be one of the more realistic characters, I was worried that his mental illness would also be chalked up to the ghosts (thankfully it wasn’t). Still it seemed weird that Cadence wouldn’t wonder whether he also heard ghosts (after all she is), especially after she discovers that his advisor was a spy who was quite likely keeping tabs on him (aggravating his paranoia). (hide spoiler)]

➜ The chapters would often end on these would be cliffhangers.(view spoiler)[ Such as when a taxi barrels towards Cadence or when Cadence discovers that her mother was with Eric on the night he died. (hide spoiler)]

➜ Lee. (view spoiler)[How realistic was it that Cadence’s first guess about the identity of the person behind the fake FB account was spot on? She had very little proof but is adamant of Lee’s guilt. (hide spoiler)]

➜ The epilogue (view spoiler)[tried to cram too much of Cadence’s life after the events of the novel. We suddenly read about all of these friends she has…and I just did not care for them (or her). (hide spoiler)]

All in all I can’t say that I disliked Ghosts of Harvard but there were many elements within the narrative that lessened my overall reading experience and opinion of the book.

My rating: ★★★✰✰ 3 stars

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