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 like them a little better if he shoved that flute up his ass."