You Came Back is everything you want a literary novel to be - a great premise
that draws you in, fully realized characters that provide a deep insight into
what it means to be human, and a writing style that gives you the feeling you're
in the hands of a talent that won't let you down. Here Coake explores the
ramifications of parents who suffered the loss of a child and had their marriage
crumble as a result. The novel picks up seven years later when their lives have
started to pick up again, and the husband, Mark Fife, has made a new love and is
ready to get married again. All that gets turned upside down, though, when the
owner of the house he used to live in - where his son died falling down steps -
finds him to tell him that her son has heard a ghost in the house that seems to
be Mark's dead son, calling for his father. The novel offers an amazingly
gripping exploration of the personal havoc that news brings. Mark resists at
first, trying to stay committed to his new love and trying not to be overcome
once again by grief and the guilt he still carries for his imagined
responsibility in his son's death. Complicating matters further is that his
first wife, before grief soured their relationship, was the great love of his
life.
As serious as the topic, this is not a depressing story or one
overcome with explaining the mechanics of inhabitants of a ghost world. It's all
about living a life when your most precious dreams and loved ones have been
taken from you. There are surprises along the way, and I wouldn't say anymore to
avoid giving anything away, but Mark Fife is one terrific character and I think
any reader would enjoy spending 400 pages inside his minds as he struggles with
these issues. I normally enjoy strict realism, and got a little concerned when I
heard this was a "ghost" story. But my mind had been opened by reading David
Long's brilliant "The
Inhabited World." Like that novel, this one is much more about the emotional
struggles of living a life full of setbacks and tragedies than it is about
ghoulish presences. Coake wrote a brilliant short story collection a few years
back and I hope this novel will give him enough success to continue writing
plenty more novels and collections.
