Review: One for Sorrow

There's not much more I can add to the spate of reviews that accompanied Christopher Barzak's award winning debut novel, One for Sorrow. It's the story of a 15-year old boy who befriends the ghost of a murdered boy just as his own family life spirals out of control. Catcher in the Rye has been listed as a point of reference, as has the more recent Lovely Bones.


Adam McCormick becomes obsessed with Jamie Marks, a boy who was murdered and then left underneath the railroad tracks. He eventually meets and befriends the boy's ghost. Adam lives with his dysfunctional family in an economically depressed town in Ohio; his literal slipping away from the world of the living is directly related to his environment. Jamie's dislocation from life mirrors Adam's own alienation from his family, who are going through tough times. His mother is crippled by a car accident and befriends the manipulative woman who caused it; Adam's brother is a delinquent, and his father is an asshole. Adam is neither an academic star or popular or affiliated with any subculture; he is a sensitive and wounded kid without any outlet for his pain and confusion.

There's a teasingly homoerotic tension between the boys. Adam has an ambiguous sexuality and a compelling, complex relationship develops between the main character, the ghost and a girl who also has a connection with the dead. Barzak's creative reinvention of ghost mythology is arrestingly hypnotic and creepy—the moth-to-flame allure of death is chillingly portrayed. The characters, both dead and alive, are three dimensional, with unexpected but believable motivations. The protagonist is wise but still talks like a kid his age—the voice is pitch-perfect, and the poetry of the prose comes from what Adam sees, rather than being imposed by an authorial voice. Barzak captures an economically depressed rural Ohio so well that it becomes a character in its own right. The imagery of old rusted farm equipment and abandoned barns is as otherworldly as the ghosts. I caught allusions to fellow Ohioan Toni Morrison ("the men without skin" is a nod to Beloved, one of the best ghost stories ever). One for Sorrow is an accomplished coming of age story that is lyrical and sad and ultimately uplifting.