"Howard Norman, who has always stood admirably apart, has reinvented the ghost story; in the process he has crafted a novel not only suspenseful but elegiac, consoling, and wholly absorbing." --Jhumpa Lahiri, author of Interpreter of Maladies and Lowland "In his ever-exquisite, lapidary prose, Howard Norman shows us in The Ghost Clause how we might best cherish our time, whether in this life or the next: through our restive, earthly passions, to the heart-song of language; and by our deep devotions to other beings. This is a lovely novel indeed." --Chang-Rae Lee, author of Native Speaker and On a Full Sea "Who better than a dead novelist to narrative this tale of married life, a missing child, and a Vermont farmhouse ripe for the haunting? The Ghost Clause is a meditation on many kinds of mystery, not the least of which is the persistent ongoingness of love." --Alice McDermott, author of Charming Billy and The Ninth Hour "...he has a keen eye for the way loss uneasily sticks with those left behind. What opens as a ghost story turns out to be something of a love story instead...he still has a knack for finding emotional resonances in muted, unlikely scenarios." --Kirkus "This is an astute, beautifully written novel." --Publishers Weekly "Thoughtful, elegiac, a good book to read by the fireside with a snifter of bourbon." --Robert E. Brown, Library Journal --