More Ghost Stories

The Greatcoat by Helen Dunmore

The first line in the book blurb on the Barnes & Noble site caught my eye and my sense of the ridiculous:

"Bestselling novelist Helen Dunmore’s historical novels have earned her comparisons in the press to Tolstoy and Emily Bronte."

What? Who would make such outrageously unbelievable comparisons but a book review comedienne? That is comparing apples to raisins or a fly to a saber toothed Big Cat.

Miss Dunmore has written an enjoyable (and a quick read---take that Tolstoy) ghost story about the Battle of Britain and the dreary and rationed aftermath of World War II for the British people. The main characters' lives are arranged and circumscribed by death and deprived life and love. Everyone wants more but no one can have it. It just isn't there anymore. The war wore it out.

The book is about a 1950's doctor's wife in one of those old flats that has a bathtub in the kitchen and dirt in the cracks of 1800's woodwork that not even an archaeologist can dig out for research into climatic changes of the Industrial Revolution. When her husband the doctor is out on a late night call, the wife answers a tapping on the dirty window pane of the main entrance door to find a WWII pilot asking for admittance. The wife is none too circumspect and all too bored with her life and waves the pilot in for a sexy landing. And from there, we explore sex with a ghost or an incubus.

One of the advantages of sex with an incubus is that the living don't pay attention to it. So the wife doesn't really have to hide her affair from anyone (her husband) except the old hag who owns and rents out her flat. The Old Hag, as with most Old hags, knows more than anyone else about the pilot incubus. The Old Hag wants her Youth and her Love back, but she doesn't have the ration credits to obtain it.