by Nichole (link)
Genre drama/angst
Pairings Isaac/OFC, Taylor/Natalie, Zac/OFC
Length 27 chapters
Status Completed
It may be a bit misleading to label this as a Strong Enough To Break era story. Although that was when Nichole began writing it, she didn’t publish the final chapter until 2011. The final notes, detailing what she saw for Zac’s future, weren’t published for six months after that. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The point is, Nichole had plenty of time to craft this story into something wonderfully heartwrenching.
In the beginning, Nichole injects the story with a lot of exposition, but she also begins in medias res. Zac has already been taken over by The Crazy, as he calls it, and so his perspective relies on lots of short, choppy sentences interspersed with some rather eloquent phrases. It’s a strange mix of oxymorons, but other than the few repetitive grammatical mistakes, I like it. Some of Nichole’s writing tics grate on me more than others (such as her tendency not to include scene breaks), but for the most part, they establish Zac’s unique narrative voice.
Living Up The Ghost is not a happy story. Nichole is very upfront about its content, and so anyone who can’t handle reading about self injury, depression and mental illness should stay away. It’s a tearjerker; that’s for sure. What I find most interesting about the story is that, Zac suffers mostly because he shoulders everyone else’s problems. We see all of their pain reflected back in him, and that is the only thing that gives the sometimes over the top melodrama of their lives enough distance to keep me from rolling my eyes. At times, it still verges on an expose of the troubled lives of suburban teens.
Nichole includes a note at the end describing an epilogue she planned to write but ultimately chose not to. While some things don’t feel resolved at the story’s end, the epilogue would have been a mixture of cheese and angst that I don’t think I could handle. Along with her story of anorexic Taylor, I think I’m fine living without said epilogue. While Living Up The Ghost is full of angst, Nichole does a good job of describing sometimes over the top levels of drama with honesty and frankness. That doesn’t mean you won’t sob your way through the better part of the story, though.
Review by Bethany (website)