Rebecca's Reviews > The Spirit Photographer

Varese’s debut novel was inspired by the life story of the real-life father of spirit photography, William H. Mumler. His fictional stand-in here is Edward Moody, who was a battlefield photographer under Matthew Brady and now owns his own photography studio in Boston. Moody considers himself to be doing a service to the bereaved by fabricating family photographs in which the ghost of a departed loved one appears. But his own loss looms large, and he must undertake a quest to the New Orleans bayou to find out what really happened. This all sounds rather more exciting than it actually is. Like Steven Price’s By Gaslight, The Spirit Photographer is too long and melodramatic, often requiring a major suspension of disbelief. The novel is capably written and plotted, but doesn’t stand out in the sea of historical fiction or live up to its exciting premise. What with Varese’s academic background, he may have been better off writing this as nonfiction.

See my full review at The Bookbag.