A Ghost in the Window, by Betty Ren Wright

A Ghost in the Window, by Betty Ren Wright. Apple Paperbacks - front cover

A Ghost in the Window, by Betty Ren Wright. Apple Paperbacks - back cover

A Ghost in the Window is the sequel to The Secret Window.

First, a brief rant: The number of times in this book that Meg is encouraged or overtly ordered to put her feelings aside so as to make life easier for other people is downright infuriating. It happened a few times in The Secret Window, too, but this time it felt like every single time she turned around, there was someone there telling her to sideline her own fear or pain or anger for someone else’s sake, and HOO BOY IT MADE ME SO MAD.

But, let’s start at the beginning.

Meg and her new best friend Rhoda are looking forward to a lovely summer. They’ve both auditioned to be part of a traveling theater program, and both of them got the parts they wanted—Rhoda will be the spunky little boy, and Meg will be… wait for it… Princess Running Deer, a Native American princess. All of the conversation around the role is as bad as you’d expect, with Meg mooning about how it’s Tragically Romantic:

She could picture herself slipping into the pioneer settlement to warn her white friends of the brutal attack that was coming. And in the second act there was that wonderful, heartbreaking speech in which the princess said goodbye to the settlers before returning to her own people and certain death. If Meg’s voice quavered when she read the lines, it was because the fate of the princess had moved her. To do the right thing and then be punished for it was dreadful.

…and Rhoda doing a rather shocking amount of stereotypical stilted English and calling herself “Big Chief” and so on. It’s all ENTIRELY as gross as I’m making it out to be.

A Ghost in the Window hardcover.

So, while it’s a stinker of a situation for Meg, it was a huge relief for this 2020 reader when her mother is like NO PLAY FOR YOU (though not for reasons of social justice or cultural sensitivity):

So that was it. Meg turned her back on Bill. “I can’t go away,” she wailed. “I can’t! I have the lead part in the theater-on-wheels. We start rehearsing next week.”

Her mother scooped up an armful of clothes and moved to the closet. “Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s too bad you have to miss some fun, but it can’t be helped. Your uncle Bill is coming home to this country for the first time in years, and I want to see him. There’ll be other plays.”

Meg felt as if she were going to explode. “I won’t go!” she roared.

Her mother whirled, her face pink with anger. “Oh, yes, you will, my girl,” she snapped. “You’re going to stay with your father, and that’s all there is to it. We’ll call him tonight and tell him you’re coming!”

On the one hand, I TOTALLY understand that Meg’s mother has A) been under immense strain given her recent divorce, B) would want to see her brother after years apart, and C) have some time to herself after basically being a single parent for years even BEFORE Meg’s father walked out.

HOWEVER. She also takes EVERYTHING out on Meg, clearly favors Meg’s older brother Bill, and never considers any of Meg’s interests or activities remotely interesting or important. And she has no problem leaving her daughter with an ex-husband who has PROVED to be INCREDIBLY unreliable—a man who has made it clear again and again that his children are a distance fourth place after his writing, his writing, and his writing.

So it’s one of those situations where you understand why someone is doing what they’re doing, but it doesn’t make it okay. (MAN OH MAN, PARENTS IN ‘80s MIDDLE GRADE, RIGHT?? I can’t wait to revisit Wait Till Helen Comes for the eight thousandth time, the parents in that one are The Worst. I feel like we need a March Madness bracket or something.)

Anyway, Bill the Perfect Child is not helpful, and sadly, his unhelpfulness lodges into Meg’s psyche:

“I try not to say things that’ll upset her,” Bill had retorted. “Unlike some people I could name.” Remembering that conversation, Meg promised herself she would do nothing to spoil this summer. She would be tactful. She wouldn’t argue. She would be an even-tempered, dependable, feminine version of Bill. At least, she’d try.

I just. This poor kid is going to need so much therapy.

And then he convinces Meg to pretend to be happy about the whole situation:

“Look,” he’d said, “Ma’s out there making herself sick because she feels guilty about sending you to stay with Dad. Tell her it’s okay.”

Meg rolled her red bathing suit into a ball and dropped it into the suitcase. “It’s not okay,” she snapped. “Why should I pretend it is?”

“Because this’ll be the first vacation Ma’s had in years, and you don’t want to spoil it for her.”

So, again, I GET IT. I get what’s going on with all of them, but WHY is it the twelve-year-old girl who has to be the adult here?? As I said up top, on this front, I really want to throw this book in a lake.

A Ghost in the Window ebook.

Anyway, so Meg heads up to northern Michigan to stay with her father in a cottage on a lake, and she gets to the point where she’s looking forward to swimming and fishing and reading on the beach… BUT THEN SHE ARRIVES, AND:

“I don’t live in Uncle Henry’s cottage anymore. If you were looking forward to lying on the beach and hiking in the woods— well, I’m sorry.”

Meg forgot her shyness. “What do you mean? Where do you live, then? Do you have a house?” She looked around again. “Is it one of these houses? Is that why we stopped here?”

“No, no, I just wanted to talk to you,” Mr. Korshak said. “I moved into town about six weeks ago. To a house on Emerson Avenue, just a few blocks from here. And no, I didn’t buy it. I don’t have money to buy a house. It’s a kind of a— a boarding house.”

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WHO DOES THAT???????????????????????

WHAT KIND OF PERSON IS LIKE, “YES, SEND OUR DAUGHTER UP HERE, WE’LL HAVE A GRAND OLD TIME,” BUT OMITS THE WHOLE “OH BY THE WAY, I MOVED AND MY SITUATION IS ENTIRELY DIFFERENT NOW” THING????

So, yeah, I really don’t know which one of them should win Worst Parent of the Year. Maybe it should be a joint award.

And THEN, it turns out that in addition to also having a part-time job that he hasn’t told her about, he’s also planning to spend all of his free time writing his dumb book—so, you know, Meg thought she’d bright-side the whole crappy situation and spend some time with her father, who she hasn’t seen in ages and who she misses SO, SO MUCH… and he’s like… “MMMM, SORRY KID, YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN FOR THE SUMMER AND ALSO YOU’RE BORING.”:

“I’ve already said I was sorry I didn’t tell you about moving out of the cottage,” Mr. Korshak said, sounding annoyed. “But we’ll spend just as much time together here as we would out at the lake, Meg. Wherever I am, I spend most of the day writing. You know the writing has to come first.”

“You don’t even care that I’m here!” Meg exclaimed. “If you really cared, you’d take time off so we could do things together.”

“If I took time off, I couldn’t send your mother money every month. I couldn’t afford to live here.…”

I can’t believe the nerve of him getting irritable with her.

AND. That last line, OMG, is such a backhanded IT’S ACTUALLY YOUR FAULT, MEG, BECAUSE CHILD SUPPORT.

But don’t worry, when she tries to talk to him about how fraught things are with her mother, he’s INCREDIBLE HELPFUL. Just kidding, no he’s not:

Meg didn’t know. “We fight a lot,” she said softly. “Practically all the time.”

Mr. Korshak pointed to the city library set in a neat square of lawn. It was small, but it was beautiful, as Mrs. Tate had insisted. “I don’t like to hear that,” he said. “You have to try harder, Meggie.”

Not that that’s surprising, given his response when she tried to talk to him about her Prophetic Dreams way back when.

And yes, there ARE Prophetic Dreams in this book—and a mystery about a still-unsolved bank robbery! a missing $25,000! AND A REAL GHOST!—but really, for me, this book is all about Meg’s Garbage Family. If you want to read about the ghost, go for it, but despite getting top billing, that storyline is secondary.

A few other highlights:

Sadly, no YOU MAY ALSO LIKE page in this one; Betty Ren Wright must have been enough of a juggernaut at this point that she got one of those rad order forms.

I wish books still had those.

• Caleb, Meg’s father’s landlady’s son, has a real bad habit of grabbing Meg by the wrist when she’s done a conversation and he’s not. So NATURALLY he turns into a love interest.

• Meg’s dad gets mad at her when she turns down a date:

“Well, what about it?” Caleb asked. “You want to see that big fish tonight?”

“I have a letter to—”

“Oh, Meg, don’t be a wet blanket.” Mr. Korshak spoke with unexpected sharpness. “Get out and have a little fun, for heaven’s sake.”

They were all looking at her now, wondering why she’d turn down the movie with Caleb in favor of sitting at home.

(Spoiler: It’s not a date. Caleb brings her out so that her dad and his mom can have some ALONE TIME.)

• Can you even imagine what kind of obnoxious sea-lioning Twitter dude Meg’s father would be?:

Those brief times were the best part of Meg’s day. She and her father talked mostly about Mr. Korshak’s writing. Even though she continued to feel resentful, Meg began to understand why his work was so important to him.

• I mean, at least she’s learning about patterns of behavior???:

Meg threw out her line. Suddenly she was remembering how her father had left the apartment on Brookfield Avenue, early one morning, two years ago, without saying goodbye to his children. He hated scenes, so he’d simply walked away while they were still in bed, assuming that she and Bill would understand. Maybe, she thought, after she returned to Milwaukee, a letter would arrive one day announcing that her father and Mrs. Larsen were married. He had taken the easy way once; he would probably do it again.

• Points for truth-telling on the complexities of families on Betty Ren Wright’s part, but MY GOD:

Separate from your parents. Walking hand in hand with Caleb made the suggestion seem a little more reasonable. She could be separate from her father, who said writing was the most important thing in the world to him, and who was starting a whole new life here in Trevor. And separate from her mother, who loved Bill more than Meg (although she tried not to), and who didn’t mind using Meg to make her former husband’s life more complicated. Meg knew these things were true, and the truth hurt. Yet she loved both her parents very much.

Anyway, I truly have nothing pithy to end this on; for a book called A Ghost in the Window, there is not much ghost and a whole lot of WTF.