Morag Joss Puccini’s Ghosts

Puccini's Ghosts

Morag Joss

Delacorte, Aug 2006, $22.00

ISBN: 038533978X

When her father dies, retired opera chorister, Lila DuCann, returns to her hometown Burnhead, Scotland to attend his funeral. She has been away from the town for years and has not seen her dad in a long time. Thus when she grieves her loss she is taken aback as memories of 1960, the fateful "Turandot Summer" when she was fifteen years old, flow freely.

Her lunatic thirtyish Uncle George Pettifer, a London music teacher, obstinately decides to direct a local production of Puccini's opera Turandot starring Lila's mom Florence "Fleur" Duncan as the title character and Lila in the support female role as slave girl Liu. Local amateur musicians and singers round out the cast. Thus only Fleur had any real experience and she never moved far up the singer's food chain. However Fleur felt she was just one song from being discovered and being treated like a pampered adored Prima Donna. To provide some quality, George brings his London friend Joe Foscari to serve as the male lead. Lila falls in love her first crush, but the failed presentation only highlighted the flop of her family leading to a tragedy and a teen in exile from her home.

PUCCINI'S GHOSTS is a terrific drama that grips readers as they wonder what happened in the summer of 1960 that destroyed a family. As Lila tells the tale from her perspective looking back to when she was a teen, fans will soon wonder whether she can delineate reality from a fantasy created perhaps out of FEARFUL SYMMETRY of what is truth. Morag Joss provides a virtuoso performance (sans Sara Selkirk) with the attendees listening to FUNERAL MUSIC and knowing first hand about dreams of HALF BROKEN THINGS.

Harriet Klausner