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It seems I had always woken up in the morning with leaves and bits of grass in my toes and under my sheets as if I'd been a ghost wandering the countryside at night. But maybe not. Maybe it wasn't until that summer my mother visited us when she was forever weaving honeysuckle wreaths, and I followed her out into the backwoods that night after dinner.
Zoe's mother has the 1980s/1990s YA mother mental illness that makes moms abandon their children, and so she leaves Zoe with her grandparents when Zoe is four. Zoe's grandparents refurbish an old playhouse once used by her mother, and her mother drops in periodically to do things like show her the old gravestone inscribed with "Zoe," which narrator-Zoe was named for.
Our Zoe meets Zoe Louise in the playhouse, when they're both four years old. Zoe is too young to realize that Zoe Louise is a ghost, and Zoe's grandparents assume she's Zoe's imaginary friend. They become close friends, and it's several years before Zoe starts noticing that while she grows older, Zoe Louise doesn't. For Zoe Louise, it's always the same day - her birthday, when her father is going to give her a pony. Zoe realizes that as Zoe Louise is a stuck-in-time ghost in her life, she is a bouncing-around-in-time ghost in Zoe Louise's life.
But while Zoe Louise's time doesn't change, Zoe Louise herself begins to change in terrifying ways...
This is a short book that feels almost epic, despite its tight focus on one house and two girls in two times. The way the timeslip works has its own internal logic that makes it feel real, but is strange enough to also feel eerie and numinous. The scary aspects would have scared the living daylights out of me had I read this as a child, and were still pretty scary now. The relationship between the girls, and between Zoe and her mother, intersect in odd ways that have the strangeness of real relationships and real emotions.
Out of print, but you can get used copies for cheap. I'm surprised this hasn't had an ebook reprint by now - it's really excellent and not particularly dated. Highly recommended.
Zoe's mother has the 1980s/1990s YA mother mental illness that makes moms abandon their children, and so she leaves Zoe with her grandparents when Zoe is four. Zoe's grandparents refurbish an old playhouse once used by her mother, and her mother drops in periodically to do things like show her the old gravestone inscribed with "Zoe," which narrator-Zoe was named for.
Our Zoe meets Zoe Louise in the playhouse, when they're both four years old. Zoe is too young to realize that Zoe Louise is a ghost, and Zoe's grandparents assume she's Zoe's imaginary friend. They become close friends, and it's several years before Zoe starts noticing that while she grows older, Zoe Louise doesn't. For Zoe Louise, it's always the same day - her birthday, when her father is going to give her a pony. Zoe realizes that as Zoe Louise is a stuck-in-time ghost in her life, she is a bouncing-around-in-time ghost in Zoe Louise's life.
But while Zoe Louise's time doesn't change, Zoe Louise herself begins to change in terrifying ways...
This is a short book that feels almost epic, despite its tight focus on one house and two girls in two times. The way the timeslip works has its own internal logic that makes it feel real, but is strange enough to also feel eerie and numinous. The scary aspects would have scared the living daylights out of me had I read this as a child, and were still pretty scary now. The relationship between the girls, and between Zoe and her mother, intersect in odd ways that have the strangeness of real relationships and real emotions.
Out of print, but you can get used copies for cheap. I'm surprised this hasn't had an ebook reprint by now - it's really excellent and not particularly dated. Highly recommended.
