Postcards from a Dead Girl

January 11, 2010
Sid Higgins, the appealing, self-deprecating narrator of Farber’s poignant, funny debut, has been receiving postcards from his old girlfriend Zoe. Unfortunately, the whimsical Zoe has disappeared, and the postmarks on the cards are more than a year old. Though he doesn’t really expect to find her, Sid travels to Europe in search of Zoe. Since Sid works for a travel agency, a slick telephone operation that uses the amusingly named Randomizer to dial potential clients, the trip is easy to arrange. Sid plaintively and self-mockingly relates his interactions with his boss, Steve; his neighbor, “Gerald the Post Office Guy”; and, most of all, his dog, Zero, whose deftly described postures convey so much, though perhaps not quite as much as Sid reads into them. Sid’s older sister, Natalie, a doctor who provides welcome perspective on Sid, is by turns affectionate, irritated, supportive, and occasionally fed up. The reader is likely to feel the same.

January 1, 2010
High-strung young man grappling with grief and possibly supernatural incidents tries to pull himself together in Farber's quirky psychological potboiler.

This we know: Sid was with Zoe, but Zoe is now gone. But where exactly is she? Sid has reason to be confused, what with the steady stream of postcards from exotic locations that he continues to receive from his one-time girlfriend. Is she on an extended world tour, or writing from the beyond? Mind you, Sid might not be the most reliable narrator of events. The spirit of his dead mother communicates with him via an old bottle of Bordeaux, and he digs a mud"spa" in his yard that looks suspiciously like a grave. He also confides (to a point) in his no-nonsense sister Natalie, a busy physician expecting her first child who seems weary of Sid's issues. Suspecting that his problems might be physical, she encourages him to undergo a CAT scan. But while waiting for the results, he jets off to Europe to see if he can get to the bottom of the Zoe mystery. Back home, he pieces together memories of a trauma and talks to his dog Zero. Candyce, a chatty hipster who works for his doctor, pursues Sid while he pines for a tranquil mystery woman he spies in his yoga class. He names her Jane, and she haunts his dreams; then a coincidence brings them together. Sid's various demons continue to torment him, though, and he needs to come to terms with some hard truths about himself before he can embrace new love.

A witty, tormented hero surrounded by fascinating, compassionate supporting characters makes this slender debut a surprisingly compulsive read.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)