Ghost of Jersey Past

Tom Perrotta's new novel Ghost Town is evocative, haunting, and nostalgic—each concise chapter is a set piece on grief and adolescence . . . and Ouija boards—and the story is especially moving if you grew up in the suburbs of New Jersey . . . while the book is set ever so slightly before my time, the narrator is thirteen in 1974, and I was only four years old then, so I don't quite remember the early 1970s— the songs on the radio are "Kung Fu Fighting," and "Rock the Boat," and "When Will I see You Again"-- which I vaguely remember, but I certainly can't name the bands that played these hits; I also appreciate that this is a different version of New Jersey than when I came of age; the fictional town of Creamwood seems to be inspired by Perrotta's Union County hometown, Garwood, a factory town full of Cape Cods and split-levels, and—in the early 1970s, the town was segregated in a de facto fashion . . . while my middle school experience in Central Jersey was at the start of the incredible diversity that Jersey is now known for-- there were mainly Italians, Irish, Hungarians, and Jews in my town-- which we considered "white" people-- but there were also Indian and Asian and Black and Hispanic families in my neighborhood; not so much in Creamwood, which is pretty much all white, but the narrator, Jimmy Perrini, starts to question his town's tacit racism and-- after his mother dies from cancer-- he's pretty much left on his own and starts to have some experiences with his hippie cousin and his hippie cousin's racially ambiguous wife Nilda and her Black cousin Hector-- while the plotting of the novel is pretty formulaic, it builds up to a big climax and all that, Jersey is in the details; I love the moment where Jimmy is riding around with burnout Eddie Fitzpatrick in his Chevy Vega, and Jimmy says he likes Jethro Tull, and Eddie says—which are my sentiments exactly— - "I might him them a little better if he shoved that flute up his ass."