Review: Good spirits by B.K. Borison
Most of this book reminded me that some people deserve to be doormats. Not the chic, Boho rattan kind. The kind you wipe your boots on and forget outside all winter.
The premise is fantastic. A ghost of Christmas past (Nolan) visits a blonde antique shop owner (Harriet) in order to force her to reckon with her past and the people in it, and the two wind up falling in love. That love is so visceral it creates a glitch in the ghost world and slowly starts to bring Nolan back to life. Where he’s supposed to be visiting her past, they’re instead thrown into visiting his past as well, and the two try to make sense of what it is they’re supposed to be learning—emotionally, spiritually, narratively, pick one. Nolan died years ago, but can’t move onto the next phase of his afterlife journey unless he helps Harriet do…something. They’re both not sure, and the reader is even less sure.
Masterful, well-paced, rich sex scenes culminate in a flurry of snowflakes when Nolan and Harriet orgasm, and I think that’s genuinely fun. It’s whimsical. It’s indulgent. It’s the literary equivalent of confetti at the Coldplay concert.
But Nolan sucks, and Harriet sucks worse.
Harriet makes it difficult to feel bad for her, which is impressive given how hard the book tries. The world can be a cruel place. Most people have the capacity to feel sympathetic toward the needy, the disabled, and the children. Harriet is none of these. There’s no plausible excuse for her bumbling nonsense. People are generally hardened enough by life to advocate for themselves when their back is against the wall—it’s an essential life skill.
By contrast, Harriet is more puddle or pile of Jell-O than she is human. When people lash out at her, she becomes their punching bag and does absolutely nothing about it. No pushback. No growth. Just vibes. Sure, her mother is a dick, but if I were forced to spend twenty-five years around Harriet, I’d be disappointed too. At some point, disappointment becomes self-preservation.
Even her romantic counterpart (Nolan) takes advantage of her throughout the book, and it’s almost funny how consistently she allows it. There are moments where he could not give two fucks about her inner turmoil because he cannot stop thinking about screwing her. He lashes out with an insult that punches directly at the core of her most self-conscious truth, and she rewards him for it. Because… of course she does. This is her brand.
On their first intimate night together, she blows him to completion mostly because she doesn’t seem to have a choice, while he refuses to go any further than fingering her. Nolan tries to help her accept compliments by forcing her to say, “thank you” while he doles them out as his hands are in her. And instead of having an opinion on that, she follows his lead no matter how awkward because…doormat.
Good Spirits could have done with more editing. The first half of the book lacks depth and emotional grounding. I wasn’t invested as a reader in the journey these two were supposedly taking together. By contrast, in the second half, the characters finally begin to transform from caricatures of archetypes and stereotypes into real people with some measure of richness. Unfortunately, by then, I’d already emotionally checked out and was reading out of spite.
Plenty of readers enjoyed this book. For me, Harriet is far too insufferable. She’s a character nobody clued in about the plot she’s supposed to be a part of. The sex scenes are masterfully crafted in an enviable way, but she constantly interrupts them to discuss nuanced information that is neither here nor there. “Technically you broke into my house when we first met.” GIRL. This man’s fingers are inside of you. Is this the time for that discussion? Her life is actively burning around her, but she’s far too taken with candy and jam to notice. Harriet is distracted and helpless and unsure about everything. This is a woman whose hands tremble when choosing between white or a whole wheat bread. Then she gets downcast when everyone around her hates her. Add me to that list.
Finally, the infantilization of Harriet is genuinely concerning. Her obsession with sweets. Her cartoonish pajamas. The fact that the first time Nolan actually fucks her, it’s in her bed with teddy bear sheets. This is not a brat/brat-tamer dynamic. It’s giving Epstein.
