The Ghost Clause

National Book Award finalist Howard Norman delivers another “provocative . . . haunting”* novel, this time set in a Vermont village and featuring a missing child, a newly married private detective, and a highly relatable ghost.

*Janet Maslin, New York Times

Simon Inescort is no longer bodily present in his marriage. It’s been several months since he keeled over the rail of a Nova Scotia–bound ferry, a massive heart attack to blame. Simon's widow, Lorca Pell, has sold their farmhouse to newlyweds Zachary and Muriel—after revealing that the deed contains a “ghost clause,” an actual legal clause, not unheard of in Vermont, allowing for reimbursement if a recently purchased home turns out to be haunted.

In fact, Simon finds himself still at home: “Every waking moment, I'm astonished I have any consciousness . . . What am I to call myself now, a revenant?” He spends time replaying his marriage in his own mind, as if in poignant reel-to-reel, while also engaging in occasionally intimate observation of the new homeowners. But soon the crisis of a missing child, a local eleven-year-old, threatens the tenuous domestic equilibrium, as the weight of the case falls to Zachary, a rookie private detective with the Green Mountain Agency. 

The Ghost Clause is a heartrending, affirming portrait of two marriages—one in its afterlife, one new and erotically charged—and of the Vermont village life that sustains and remakes them. |

"Howard Norman, who has always stood admirably apart, has reinvented the ghost story; in the process he has crafted a novel not only suspenseful but elegiac, consoling, and wholly absorbing."  —Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Interpreter of Maladies and Lowland     "In his ever-exquisite, lapidary prose, Howard Norman shows us in The Ghost Clause how we might best cherish our time, whether in this life or the next: through our restive, earthly passions, to the  heart-song of language; and by our deep devotions to other beings. This is a lovely novel indeed."   —Chang-Rae Lee, author of Native Speaker and On a Full Sea   "Who better than a dead novelist to narrative this tale of married life, a missing child, and a Vermont farmhouse ripe for the haunting? The Ghost Clause is a meditation on many kinds of mystery, not the least of which is the persistent ongoingness of love." —Alice McDermott, author of Charming Billy and The Ninth Hour  "...he has a keen eye for the way loss uneasily sticks with those left behind. What opens as a ghost story turns out to be something of a love story instead...he still has a knack for finding emotional resonances in muted, unlikely scenarios." —Kirkus   "This is an astute, beautifully written novel." —Publishers Weekly  "Thoughtful, elegiac, a good book to read by the fireside with a snifter of bourbon." —Robert E. Brown, Library Journal