Spirited Away

Ghosts may not help in fixing familial bonds, but they can certainly do the paperwork.

- By ANUJA CHANDRAMOULI

In Daisy Rockwell's Alice Sees Ghosts, they flit across the pages not to haunt, but to intervene, largely helping out in legal matters related to property disputes and annuities. There is nothing gruesome or grotesque here; even when skeletons tumble out of the closet, it is in a bloodless, somewhat clichéd fashion. Rockwell leans into the absurdity of law, as Charles Dickens once quipped, "the law is an ass," which takes forever to fumble along in a clumsy, corrupt, inconvenient, and incompetent manner to a mostly unsatisfactory conclusion. It is probably why the author decided that ghostly intervention is just about the only thing that can grease the rusty wheels and smooth the process of the law.