A Certain Slant of Light

August 22, 2005
First-time author Whitcomb infuses Gothic romance with modern-day drama to create a highly sensual, supernatural story of two spirits caught in purgatory. The body of Helen perished 130 years ago, but her soul still roams the Earth, cleaving to humans who share her love of literature. In all those years, Helen has never seen anyone else who is "Light," until she meets James, who has possessed the body of an 11th grade student. Knowing at once that they are meant to be together, Helen allows James to teach her how to enter the body of an "empty" teenager, not knowing what complications lie ahead. Posing as Jennifer Ann, the daughter of fundamentalist Christians, Helen finds herself trapped in a sterile household void of art and literature with little chance to visit James, who lives in a run-down house with a violent older brother. Meticulously wrought descriptions of the ghosts' feelings and actions allow readers to experience the physical sensations of Helen and James as they rediscover the pleasures of taste and touch and re-experience the suffering that is part of every human experience. Sexually explicit scenes and not-so-gentle jabs at hypocritical Christians may raise some eyebrows, but the author's poetic prose, capturing the spirit and sorrow of the two unearthly protagonists, will likely have a mesmerizing effect on readers. Ages 14-up.

September 1, 2005
Gr 9 Up -Helen died 130 years ago as a young woman. Unable to enter heaven because of a sense of guilt she carried at death, she has been silent and invisible but conscious and sociable across the generations. Her spirit has been sustained by its attachment to one living human host after another, including a poet and, most recently, a high-school English teacher. While she sits through his class one day, she becomes aware of James and he -unlike the mortals all around them -is aware of her as well. James, who also died years earlier, inhabits the body of a contemporary teen, Billy. James and Helen fall in love, he shows her how to inhabit the body of a person whose spirit has died but who still lives and breathes, and the two begin to unfold the mysteries of their own pasts and those of their adolescent hosts. Jenny, whose body Helen now uses, is the only child of strict religious parents who controlled her beyond what her spirit could endure. Billy's spirit left his body after a string of tragedies resulting from drug abuse and domestic violence. James and Helen court in both modern and old-fashioned ways; here is a novel in which explicit sex is far from gratuitous or formulaic. Whitcomb writes with a grace that befits Helen's more modulated world while depicting contemporary society with sharp insight. In the subgenre of dead-narrator tales, this book shows the engaging possibilities of immortality -complete with a twist at the end that wholly satisfies." -Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA"

Copyright 2005 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2005
Gr. 9-12. In sensuous prose, Helen, who has been dead for 130 years, describes what it's like to live as Light, clinging to a human host, then reentering an empty human body and becoming physically and emotionally attuned to the world. Helen is startled when she realizes that a student in her host's English class can see her. James, too, is Light, but he has taken over the body of Billy, who almost overdosed on drugs. Their joy at finding one another turns quickly to love, and James helps Helen locate an empty body that she can inhabit. Fellow student Jennifer seems the perfect choice, but the unhappiness in her fundamentalist family, as well as the chaos of Billy's household, mix uneasily with the pleasures the spirits are rekindling. Whitcomb writes beautifully, especially when she is describing the physical delights of sexual love and the horror the spirits endure as they fight through their personal hells to reach the other side. Unfortunately, her stereotypical portrayal of a Christian family is so unnuanced that it jars when juxtaposed with the rest of the writing. Still, in many ways this will be irresistible to teens. Watch for more from Whitcomb.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)

August 21, 2006
By turns whispery, giddy and urgent, Molina's voice skillfully rides the emotional roller coaster of this gothic-style romance carried on by Victorian-era ghosts who come to inhabit nubile 21st-century teenage bodies. Helen, a passionate lover of literature who's been "light" since her death 130 years ago, has spiritually attached herself, invisible, to human hosts for decades. But when she is one day seen by a kindred spirit—literally—in James, a ghost now inhabiting a teen junkie's form, everything changes. Helen takes over the body of Jenny, the "empty" daughter of strict fundamentalist Christians. As humans, the two ghosts experience new sensations; they navigate contemporary social and romantic mores and also remember more about their own past lives among the living. The intriguing premise and eerie execution of this tale will arrest romance and ghost story fans alike. A few expletives and some graphic sexual encounters keep this firmly in the older listener category. Ages 14-up.

January 1, 2006
In Whitcomb's original, opinionated, sexy, and romantic novel, Helen is a disembodied spirit who seeks to escape the hell of her icy drowning by "cleaving" to a series of human hosts; after 150 years, she meets fellow marooned spirit James and falls in love. Whitcomb successfully navigates a complex plot that after many dramatic turns is resolved both cleverly and happily.

(Copyright 2006 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

November 1, 2005
"Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you're dead." So begins Whitcomb's original, opinionated, sexy, and romantic novel of the afterlife. Helen is a disembodied spirit who seeks to escape the hell of her dark icy drowning by "cleaving" to a series of human hosts; after 150 years, she meets fellow marooned spirit James, who has taken over a vacant body (that of teenage screw-up Billy, who failed to return after a drug overdose). James and Helen fall in love, and James persuades Helen to enter a body of her own (that of Jenny, who has been driven to "wander in limbo" in order to escape the constricted life imposed on her by her ultra-controlling fundamentalist Christian parents). Whitcomb is unfailingly insightful, whether contrasting twenty-first-century teenagers' mores and means of communication -- mostly shrugs and thoughtless profanity -- with Helen and James's old-fashioned speech and courtship, or skewering the oppressive sterility and hypocrisy of Jenny's household. Having sailed through establishing her original premise, Whitcomb successfully navigates a complex plot that after many dramatic turns is resolved both cleverly (in the case of providing Billy and Jenny with a continuing relationship after they each return to their bodies) and happily. "Just walk up to your hell and give it a push," James tells Helen, and together they find their own heaven.

(Copyright 2005 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)