The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit

June 2, 2014
At the start of the latest novel from Joyce (Some Kind of Fairy Tale), a coming-of-age story set in the summer of 1976, college student David Barwise arrives in Skegness, a gritty English seaside holiday resort, looking for a job. Although his decision is prompted partly by a desire to avoid working for his stepfather, David also wants to revisit the beach where, when he was three years old, he witnessed his father die of a heart attack. He has long suspected that his family has never told him the full story. After landing a job at the resort, David immerses himself in the hardscrabble world of carnies, fortune-tellers, and worn-out comedians. His kindness and humility enable him to make friends quickly, including with, to everyone’s surprise, the volatile, anti-immigrant, English nationalist Colin. But when David proves unable to refuse the advances of Colin’s wife, Terri, the resulting tension is palpable. Precisely because Joyce is a master of dialogue and character, the artificial plot complications provided by the mystery of David’s unresolved past feel unnecessary, but, otherwise, his sweltering summer escapades make for a terrific and absorbing read. Agent: Doug Stewart and Madeleine Clark, Sterling Lord Literistic.

June 15, 2014
Beautiful, available women; ugly racist shenanigans; haunting apparitions. They all come with a college student's summer job in this marvelously juicy entertainment from the British fantasist (Some Kind of Fairy Tale, 2012, etc.).Back in the day, there were English coastal resorts that gave working-class families a week of strenuous fun. Working-class himself, David Barwise looks for work at the Skegness resort, drawn there because of his father's fatal heart attack on the beach when he was a toddler. It's 1976, and the heat, strangely, is scorching. David is hired as a utility player at the tacky resort, working with both kids and grannies. He's an appealing lad, if a touch naive, and a hit with the friendly vacationers, but life is far from problem-free. He's drawn into the orbit of two cleaners, Colin and his gorgeous wife, Terri. Colin, a brutal ex-con and abusive husband, makes David report any flirtations Terri may have, not realizing the student is a prime suspect; Terri and David feel a strong mutual attraction. On another front, David is bamboozled into attending an anti-immigrant fascist meeting, which lands him in hot water with another gorgeous woman, the half-Guyanese dancer Nikki. And there are his visions: a man in a blue suit with a boy. David feels revulsion. A primal fear is alive in him; a psychic, the resort's resident laundry woman, will help him work through the trauma. Joyce folds this supernatural element gracefully into a realistic coming-of-age work that is also an evocation of a vanishing subculture. David is torn between Terri and Nikki; then Terri disappears, and Colin summons him, late at night, to dispose of some heavy plastic bags....There's so much to enjoy here, from the fake stage magic of a woman sawn in half to the real magic of a gifted professional at work.

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June 1, 2014
In 1976, British college student David Barwise takes a job as a greencoat at a resort in a small coastal town on the North Sea. Along with an eccentric group of coworkers, he runs one daft entertainment after another, including judging the Glamorous Grandma competition and running the light show for the Italian tenor. David is having the time of his life, basking in the good cheer of vacationers hell-bent on enjoying their well-deserved break from the scruffy factories and the dirty coal mines of their industrial year. But David soon finds himself caught up in the politics of the National Front and in love with the wife of a menacing thug. What's more, he's being haunted by visions of a man dressed in a blue suit who is holding the hand of a small, terrified child. The heat of a drought and an infestation of ladybugs only serve to heighten his sense of discomfiture. Joyce expertly captures a certain time and place, when family resorts were fading out and political extremism was on the rise, overlaying his snapshot with a subtle hint of the supernatural.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

March 1, 2014

England, 1976, the hottest summer in memory, so why does the family of college student David object to his job at a beachside resort? Because David's biological father disappeared there 15 years earlier. The family's concern seems borne out by the weird events David experiences, including visions of a man with a rope and the plague of ladybugs infesting the town. Then things get really scary. Joyce has a good following here and the O. Henry, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards to his name, but the publisher thinks that this erotic and darkly supernatural work is the one to break him out.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2014

It's 1976 and David Barwise has just joined the staff of a fading holiday resort on the coast of England. It's a summer of discovery for David; some of his coworkers are involved heavily in the National Front (anti-immigrant) movement. He's also caught in a romantic triangle with a damaged woman while ignoring the kinder, easier, and better match. And there are the ghosts of his deceased father and his three-year-old self to contend with--his father died years ago of an apparent heart attack in the same coastal town where he now works. While Graham's novel invites comparisons to Stephen King's Joyland, it stands on its own literary merits. It's luminously written, with just a few sparkles of the uncanny. A few Britishisms may throw American readers out of the story, but the well-developed plot and the likable characters will draw them back in. VERDICT Recommended for readers who enjoy their coming-of-age tales with a hint of dark fantasy. Older teens will also enjoy. This should be the book that brings to award-winning Joyce (Some Kind of Fairy Tale) the wider attention he deserves.--Jennifer Mills, Shorewood-Troy Lib., IL

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 22, 2014
In Joyce’s poignant, haunting, and humorous coming-of-age novel, British college student David Barwise recalls a very hot, dry summer of 1976, when, at age 19, he spent the months before his sophomore college year working at a fading holiday resort in Skegness, an English town on the North Sea. Employed as a combination social director and general factotum, David makes friends with some of his colorful “odd fish” coworkers, antagonizes others, falls in love with two women, and is disturbed by glimpses of a couple of ghost figures. His paramours are a lovely, whip-smart young dancer named Nikki and a dour but sexy cleaning lady named Terri. Terri’s married to a jealous brute named Colin, who inexplicably takes David under his muscled wing, introducing him to members of the white-supremacist U.K. Front Party, some of whom work at the resort. The ghosts—the bespoke title character and a young boy—have arrived for a reason that takes David awhile to discover. With the eccentrics, love interests, racists, and resort guests, reader Jackson is given the opportunity to display an assortment of vivid accents, among them Colin’s gruff Cockney, the fluty faux Etonian of the resort’s showtime announcer, the tenor singer’s tongue-rippling Italian, the motor-mouthed Mancunian of David’s roommate, and the demanding squawks of the guests’ children. Topping them all is the proper English of David, both as the deep-voiced, mature narrator and the higher-pitched, less-confident “new boy” at the resort. A Doubleday hardcover.