Diary of a Part-Time Ghost, by Vered Ehsani

Diary of a Part-Time Ghost


Vered Ehsani

A young adult time travel and fantasy novel, the historical content involves the Boston Tea Party of 1773.  It is in first person, a story told in a quirky way by a fifteen-year-old boy named Ashish.  One of the unique things about this story is that it is told by an Indian American boy, not your run of the mill teen protagonist.  The author has written Ash as a typical high schooler, just wanting to fit in and stay awake during monotonous history lectures.

Ash's life takes a dramatic turn when his aunt drops a birthday gift  off for him, a strange old history book with a leather cover.  The boy's life has been getting strange already, with disembodied voices and nighttime apparitions.  His aunt's cryptic admonitions that "What you focus on you will become" and "Don't let him touch you, the book of The Veil" offer him no clues about what his mission will soon be.  In history class he happens to open the book to a strangely compelling painting of a poor 18th century English family.  He touches it and finds himself there, though as invisible as if he was a ghost.  Back at home, tortured by three sisters, he nevertheless finds himself back through the literary looking glass for his first clear sight of The Veil between our world and another.  He has an erstwhile guide there who frequently decamps, leaving him on his own.  He also soon encounters the "him" of "don't let him touch you", a tall rangy yellow eyed fellow who is the epitome of all the darkest urges.  This fellow, plus the shadows of negative emotion that reach out at his bidding, are constant threats for Ash, not only in his own real world but also in the past where he struggles to help a girl, his ancestor, and her brother stay clear of the monster.

The joke-cracking teen boy took me a little while to warm up to, but once he started his trips to 1773 he started to make sense.  I think of all his traits, Ash's quickly learning how staying neutral for safety's sake in the life he has lived so far was most admirable and heartening.  He constantly carps on himself for acting before thinking or saying impulsive things, but it seems natural for him to do so.  The females in the story are stronger than they would be in many young adult novels, and for the most part the author gets his history right.  Those small inn accuracies I did notice, like the sofa in the living room of the 1773 Boston house, can be explained as Ash's interpretation.

The only trouble is that the book ends without tying up some loose ends.  Some of that seems part of the author's plan for sequels, but not all.  For instance, Ash only gets the book his mother confiscated back because he promises to type up his sister Shanti's history paper.. and that never happens.   That just does not feel like something important enough that it can wait for the sequel.

All in all, however, I found the story charming and inventive, and halfway through it I realized that two boys I know, Daniel and Samuel Ahn, would love this book.  The author provided me with a digital copy so I could read it with a text to speech program, but I have already sent for a paperback edition to give to my young neighbors.