cover image The Ghost of Greenwich Village

The Ghost of Greenwich Village

Lorna Graham. Ballantine, $15 trade paper (345p) ISBN 978-0-345-52621-2

TV news veteran Graham makes her fiction debut with an amusing if needlessly busy story of a young woman trying to make it in the big city. Eve leaves Ohio for a life of excitement in Manhattan, settling into an apartment in Greenwich Village with a (relatively) cheap rent because nobody wants to deal with the resident ghost, Donald Bellows, the "beatnik from hell" who insists on dictating a novel to Eve, who complies just to keep the peace. She falls into a job writing for a morning talk show, stumbling at first and then settling in after a successful interview with prickly and legendary designer, Matthias Klieg. The challenge is keeping her job while juggling Donald's demands, a sadistic co-host, the elegant Mr. Klieg, and a rescued puppy. Graham draws a cute and sometimes horrifying picture of life backstage at a morning talk show, but the novel is so overplotted and densely populated that readers may well have trouble keeping things straight. (June)