Kirk Farber

In POSTCARDS FROM A DEAD GIRL the protagonist, Sid, has two dead women in his life – he thinks he’s receiving postcards from his dead girlfriend Zoe, for one, but he also thinks that the spirit of his dead mother is trapped in a 40-year-old bottle of Bordeaux that he keeps in his basement. The reader doesn’t learn how Zoe died until the very end of the novel, when it’s revealed that she was in the passenger seat of a car Sid was driving when it crashed – Sid lived and Zoe died.

As the postcards keep coming, Sid decides that if he follows them to their sources, he might find Zoe herself – even though all the postcards are dated from a year ago. First he visits a mechanic in New Jersey, explaining that his girlfriend is “missing” and asking if she’s been seen, but has no luck. Next Sid visits London, Paris, and Barcelona – in each city he visits post offices, but post office officials can’t tell him much: they explain that various mishaps might delay the arrival of a postcard for up to a year, and suggest possible scenarios, but have nothing more to add.

Back at home, Sid makes misguided attempts to get his life back on track. Too many scenes are set at Sid’s dead-end job selling package vacations at a travel agency. He gets a CAT scan, at his sister’s encouragement, to make sure his brain is functioning properly (it is). He goes out with one girl who turns out to be horrible, and develops a crush on another. He tries yoga, and gets a mud bath at a local spa. Sid enjoys the spa mud bath so much he tries digging a hole in his backyard to duplicate it, eventually producing a ragged pit full of muck whose consistency, at least, reminds him of the spa.

Eventually, Sid has a confrontation with his sister, who demands that he face facts: his girlfriend is dead, she’s not coming back, and Sid can’t keep ruining his life in endless, doomed attempts to reach her. This wake-up call brings Sid back to the present, and he gets his life back together: he drinks the bottle of Bordeaux containing his mother’s spirit, setting it free, he connects solidly with the girl he has a crush on, and he quits his job at the travel agency.

The writing here is average – Sid’s inner monologue runs to banal thoughts like, “I’ve been watching sunsets lately, to see what the big deal is. As a rule, I like them.” We meet Zoe through flashbacks, and she’s not appealing – she needs constant affirmations of affection from Sid, and her individual quirks are limited to doctoring candid photos and pretending to speak Chinese.

The agent says that this book is “like a Wes Anderson movie” but I don’t see the resemblance. Simply put, POSTCARDS FROM A DEAD GIRL is boring.… (mais)

Sid is funny. Sid works as a telemarketer selling “great getaways” to foreign countries, yet Sid doesn’t really doesn’t travel. Sid has funny conversations with his dog, Zero (though Sid can’t really explain how, when or where he got the dog). He is waiting forever for his CAT scan results, to tell him when and if he’s dying since he randomly smells lilacs and talks to his dead mother in an old bottle of Boudreaux. His annoying next door neighbor, Mary Jo, a juvenile brat taunts him incessantly. He digs a hole in his backyard to further his spa mud bath fix and has a serious problem not accepting credit card offers.

Sid strikes up a relationship with Gerald, the postman neighbor, who has built a bomb shelter. Instead of food, and unable to answer the question – if you can only read one book for the rest of your life – what would you read; Gerald has outfitted the shelter with aisle upon aisle of books. And one more thing, Sid has been receiving postcards from his (most likely) dead girlfriend. He starts a trek through Paris and Spain to try and understand the origin of these cards but is left with only questions.

Sid is engaging and a little bit sad. He is not sure where his life is going, not sure what he’s doing, and not sure what happened with his relationship with Zoe, the sender of the cards. He is brutally honest, heartfelt, quirky, and…lost. He often misinterprets basic conversations - two in particular (with his doctor and his boss) where I seriously laughed (very loudly) during my morning commute. You want to cheer for him; you hope he emerges from his mud bath, cleaner, happier, and ready to brave the world again. And at the end, when there are answers to the questions that have been mounting throughout the book, you understand why he’s in pain, why he’s lost, and maybe how he can heal.

I felt ready for the conclusion when it came. I didn’t feel shortchanged or slighted, as some of the other reviews point out. I thought Farber tied up all the loose ends and brought around the resolution well and timely.… (mais)