Strong Spirits by Elisa DeCarlo

~ The Quick Review ~

Strong Spirits is a slim little novel, weighing in at a mere 151 pages, and the elevator pitch on the cover sums it up perfectly: “Aubrey’s father has given up the ghost… but the ghost isn’t ready to give up Aubrey!” Expect quick, fun absurdity paired with dry humor in 1920s England. And if that’s what you’re in the mood for, Strong Spirits absolutely delivers.

~ The Real Review ~

Now, before I begin the review, I feel the need to offer an explanation. I review books against what they’re trying to be. Naturally, I’m imperfect, but I try. An example of this is An Exchange of Hostages—the damn book is about people training to be court-ordered torturers. Nothing could be farther from my interests, but I only discarded it when bad characterization undermined the sort of story An Exchange of Hostages was trying to be.

Strong Spirits is a little thing that tries to be nothing more than a fun, quick story with a steady thread of humor. I mean, it’s 151 pages long. This is not a Serious Novel™—it’s 1990s camp.

And it’s perfect at being 1990s camp. Aubrey makes a great protagonist. The youngest son of some English royalty I don’t understand on account of being a plebeian American, he’s a wastrel and a lay about suddenly forced into either a) poverty or b) reliance on family. Naturally, he’d prefer the former.

Despite never having tried a day in his life, he’s surprisingly likable. He’s juuust down-to-earth enough that I don’t normally want to kick his ass, and every time I do, it came as a surprise. I had grown to like him so much I forgot his worst attributes.

This segues into something I think DeCarlo does extremely well. Strong Spirits takes place in 1920s England, a time of fashion and architecture … and a lot of shittiness for everyone not upper-class and white.

I sometimes struggle with historical novels, because pretending the past wasn’t racist and classist and sexist and homophobic feels like sweeping it under the rug. On the other hand, a historical book portraying all the biases of the past feels almost like perpetuating that shittiness. Like, as a woman I don’t want protagonists and “sympathetic” characters wandering around disparaging women, even though attitudes towards women a hundred years would have been disgusting among the average population.

Strong Spirits somehow perfectly gets around both of these problems. The world Aubrey inhabits has the problems that the real 1920s had. And Aubrey and his friends aren’t anachronistically conscious young men eschewing the biases of their time. They just exhibit them in a way that acknowledges they exist without giving them any credence.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this (I’m sure I am), but compare this to The Joy Wagon which really, really demonstrated some of the biases of past decades, but felt caustic, like maybe those biases were either unconsidered or unchallenged.

Another thing DeCarlo does well is add just enough detail to make her story feel full-sized even at half the length of the average novel. It’s like how some people know exactly where to put a potted plant and a throw blanket to make an otherwise bland room feel homey.

The examples of this are small and maybe don’t seem tremendously important. Take, for example, Aubrey’s nickname: bush baby.

It’s entirely unnecessary to the plot, yet it’s woven into the story multiple times, and it really gives the feeling that Aubrey exists outside of the few pages we get to actually watch him.

Frankly, graded against what Strong Spirits is trying to be, I can’t find any fault with it. I guess my only caution would be that the humor is very dry, and since humor is an important component of the storytelling, you probably won’t like Strong Spirits if you don’t like dry humor.

As for me, I enjoyed it as a punch of quick fun after the more seriously minded Regenesis. I already own book two in the series—The Devil You Say—and plan on saving it for when I need a pick-me-up.

Public ratings: 3.67/5 | 12 ratings

Cover art by Richard Bober: