Postcards from a Dead Girl is the story of Sid, an incredibly troubled young man still coping with the death of his mother (whose ghost lives in a bottle of 1967 Bordeaux) and is assaulted with postcards from a dead (not dead?) old girlfriend named Zoe.
The novel follows him to his job as a telemarketer for vacation packages, to his multiple hospital visits for real (and imaginary) ailments, to his penchant for mud baths and car washes, and through his many failures in life and love.
The narrative is very fractured, with his chronological day-to-day life interrupted by memory and dream chapters. These memory chapters slowly give the reader answers to some of the questions posed (how did the mother die? what happened to Zoe?) but only after reading almost half the novel.
I really enjoyed the tone of the novel. Sid’s first person voice is casual and unpretentious. It’s the voice of any number of down and out twenty-something guys trying to cope with their issues. I also really liked the short chapters, most were only two to four pages long, allowing the novel to be read very quickly.
What I didn’t really enjoy was how nothing much happened during the novel. Sid goes to his crappy job, screws up with women we don’t care about, talks to his dog Zero and his friend the postman, and argues with his doctor sister. At the start of the novel I had thought it would be a semi-mystery, following Sid as he tries to solve the case of the dead girl postcards. But it doesn’t really go that direction.
Postcards is a light, semi-entertaining read one could eat through in an afternoon if so inclined.
Bent Shelf Book Reviews 