Rating: 
Summary: look under the bed tonight
Review: Always having been fascinated by anything "ghostly," I put this book on my wish list this year after reading a wonderful review in the Washington Post. I was pulled into the book within the first few pages, and I tried to surface periodically to regain a sense of what was real. Layer upon layer of the supernatural, of the mysterious interwoven tales within, of actual fear, kept me tightly bound to this volume. The style is immaculate, the prose is lyrical, and shades of Jane Austen, Henry James, Wilke Collins, abound. Read it, be glad you read it, and then try to sleep.
Rating: 
Summary: A Portable Haunted House
Review: Exactly what this book was to me while reading it. No matter where I went-on the bus, on breaks at work, at home-I could not escape the all-prevading creepiness due to the intensely suspenseful scenes and eventual unveiling of the extent to which this particularly strange sort of evil has dared to venture. My rating of 4 stars generally means a book is such thoroughly worthwhile entertainment that the few things I may not like so much about it will fall by the wayside. I tend to agree with many other reviewers that the end was somewhat confusing. After reading the final few pages, though, I'm pretty sure I understand it all. (All the more reason to read it again.)Personally I found Gerard to be a bit too much of a "dweeb" to take the erotic passages he exchanges with Alice very seriously, but it's not primarily a romance, though it could be said in many ways throughout that love is a weapon.
Rating:
Summary: Good, though better in retrospect
Review: Fans of Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories will probably enjoy this most, with its interweaving of carefully crafted homage pieces and a contemporary literary-mystery plot. There's a lot to be said for this kind of novel: it's a wonderful opportunity to explore literary-theoretical musings while using an engaging mystery to drive the story. The problem is that A. S. Byatt aced this particular sub-genre, probably for all time, with her Booker-winning "Possession"(1990), and it's still so far ahead of anything else in the game that newcomers are invariably found wanting, even if they aren't courting comparison (as I'm pretty sure Harwood isn't here). I quite enjoyed "The Ghost Writer" but, for me, it wasn't quite daring enough. The author clearly knows his sources, but he doesn't do anything dazzling with them. He throws in a few references to Henry James but then feels the need to explain them, presumably for the benefit of the less widely read. Moreover, he refuses to explore much of the theoretical territory his metafictional narrative must necessarily cross: the crisis of the subject; the relationship between reader, writer and text; the faith we put in written records, even fictional ones. Nor did I find the novel sufficiently plot-driven to sustain interest merely as a thriller. Tension builds, but the short stories which end up being central sometimes feel, in the reading, irritatingly tangential. You get the sense that it took a very long time to "build" this book; that it was made like a carefully crafted object, held up and considered from different angles, refined, worried over, and extensively revised. I say that because it's more pleasing in retrospect when you can see it in its totality, when the mystery is solved and you see the seemingly complex plot in its devilish simplicity. But as a story which unfolds in time, as stories must, it isn't quite so compelling. You get the impression that information is being wilfully withheld - it is of course, as it must be in every story of suspense, but the trick is to disguise the process. Here, I just felt I was being toyed with. Ultimately, though, these are fairly minor quibbles. The novel works. It really comes to life eighty pages from the end, and that ending, when it comes, is powerful, vivid and magnificently dark. When you put the book down and look back on what you've read, the plot and the passions which drive the characters are really quite macabre and extraordinary. The effect is that "The Ghost Writer" is a novel you might enjoy looking back on more than reading. It'll certainly have you looking forward: this is a first novel, and the dark intelligence behind it bodes well for Harwood's future work.
Rating:
Summary: ingenious... in retrospect
Review: I couldn't agree with the above review more. I really enjoyed this novel -- it's skillful, imaginative and creepy -- everything I was looking for. But... there is that sense of being elaborately played with -- some of the parsing out of information plays out almost like a Victorian serial. I suppose that was intentional but it felt a little cheap considering the obvious literary talent of the author. Still, I couldn't put it down and it's miles above most of the alleged thrillers out there. I hope it's a big success.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting tale, with an unexpected twist
Review: I found this to be quite an absorbing read. It interweaves different elements of storytelling effortlessly, and with every chapter that comes to pass, makes you ponder what awaits the protagonist. It takes some unravelling, but that only adds to the interest factor. If you like an absorbing read that has elements of the supernatural, and lots of twists, then this is your cup of tea.
Rating:
Summary: A quick comment about the ending issue
Review: I just want to put in my 2 cents about the whole "ending" issue for those who are considering this book. Maybe it's not fair to say that the ending "technically" leaves many loose ends. In the strictest sense we find out what has happened, more or less (if you don't happen to be an electrician you may have to reread certain passages to get the gist of what's going on, that's all I'll say). I think it's the lack of any greater explaination that makes you as the reader feel so uncertain as to what you've read. All the deeper questions about how the situation became what it was and what caused the characters to step across certain boundaries is left open-ended. When the final twist is revealed (and I mean the final twist, not the first, more obvious ones,) and we find out we don't know what we thought we knew, we're never told why this is so. What crept into the souls of these characters and caused them to play out these events? What is the deeper meaning behind this family's dark history? Without this explanation the story loses some of its emotional impact towards then end.
I still give it four stars, for the sake of the 360 pages leading up to that last five.
Rating: 
Summary: Engrossing and well written
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed the writers style and use of language. The book is so well written it seems almost unfair to complain about the mind-numbing naivete of the narrator or the unnecessarily abrupt ending. But....ultimately the book was unsatisfying. I know several other reviewers have said that by rereading the last chapter they figured a few more details out. I think that after readig through 360-some pages, a reader should be able to understanding the ending.
Rating:
Summary: Have to agree with many others...
Review: I won't waste time repeating the sentiments I've already seen in many other reviews - great read, disappointing ending, you get the idea. In defense of the author, I think that maybe the ending is supposed to be ambiguous...unfortunately the fact that it was intentional doesn't mean that it works here. The story just feels hacked-off, not invitingly mysterious when you read that last paragraph.
It's not that the ending is entirely open-ended, either. The major plot twist is indeed explained. As some reviews have pointed out, many people will have that bit worked out long before the final chapter. It's more the intricate details of what REALLY happened "that night" and who was responsible for what that are left foggy. A few ambiguous comments are made on the subject but these could be interpreted in a number of ways. Unfortunately these details are what builds the intrigue of the story, and leaving them hanging only leaves the reader hoping for more.
Rating:
Summary: A Stylish, Atmospheric Ghost Story
Review: In his debut novel, John Harwood creates an eerily psychological horror story with a nod (and a wave) to Victorian literature. As the novel begins in Australia, young Gerard discovers hidden away in his mother's possessions a strange photograph and a book. His mother swoops down on him with fury, snatching the belongings from him and hiding them away where Gerard cannot find them, refusing to tell him of her past. Soon thereafter, he begins a secret correspondence with a crippled English girl named Alice, and her letters rescue him emotionally from the bleak surroundings in his Australian home. As he matures, he falls in love with Alice, who won't let him see her for fear he'll feel sorry for her. As he learns that the book his mother has hidden away contained a ghost story written by his grandmother Viola, which Harwood presents in full, Gerard confides even more deeply in Alice. Viola's lengthy - and thoroughly creepy - stories seem like separate entities until Gerard discovers some disturbing connections. Upon his mother's death, he sets out to England to finally meet up with his almost-healed Alice and to settle family matters. What he doesn't count on, however, is that nothing, not even his own senses, can be trusted. Even if the reader solves much of the mystery before it is revealed, the ending has all the force it should, thanks to Harwood's highly visual description and talent with suspense.Harwood does a marvelous job of embedding the mannered ghost stories within Gerard's story, and the stories-within-a-story works exceptionally well in his hands. The tales are so throat-grabbing by themselves that I forgot at times that they were but segments of the whole. The effect is truly eerie as details from them begin to surface in Gerard's plot. Because the author's debt to Henry James' THE TURN OF THE SCREW is obvious well before he makes reference to it, I wished he had just let the style and the allusions to speak for themselves instead of pointing them out. His acknowledgment of Dickens' GREAT EXPECTATIONS is even less successful. I overlooked these lapses simply because I could not willingly put this novel aside. This is not Stephen King-type horror but something more elegant and literary. This moody, stylish debut will capture your imagination for hours at a time. Especially if you like creepiness, you'll love this tale of multiple hauntings and mystery.
Rating:
Summary: So much of it is so good ...
Review: It was hard to decide on a star rating for this book. I read almost all of it in one day, engrossed by, enchanted with, and envious of Harwood's talent. *This*, I marveled, is his debut novel? And so I eschewed all the day's tasks in favor of sitting on the deck and reading, reading, reading. And then, with about eight pages left to go, it all went south. When I read the last sentence, I actually turned the page, hoping for something more, not because I was sorry to see the story end (I'm often sad to say goodbye to characters), but because I thought there must be, on those blank end pages, the "real" ending. But no, there was nothing. And I stood up, set the book down and said, "What the hell just happened?!" So much of it is so good that I want to give it five stars, but the ending seemed so tacked-on -- or maybe just silly -- that I was tempted to knock my rating down to three. Instead, I split the difference. But now I'm torn, torn between telling people to read it so they can explain to me what I might have missed or telling them not to read it, because the ending is so unsatisfying. I feel a bit gypped.
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