Seventeen-year-old Sal Amani lives in a haunted house, and everyone at Holden High knows it. However, Sal is keeping secrets, and his sister Asha—who is a talented writer with dreams of attending university and becoming a journalist—has put her life on hold while their mother deals with the loss of her husband. When the house keeps Sal awake, he runs. Sal’s good friend Dirk Madden tries to help, but he’s worried about social capital. Then, there’s Elsie, who has wrongly been labelled a slut.
When Pax Delaney moves to town, he claims he’s good with ghosts. Although weird and unbalanced is Pax’s normal, Sal is drawn to this boy who knits his own clothes, keeps crystals, and burns sage. As their unlikely friendship forms and evolves, the two learn, along with the reader, that the things that haunt us cannot always be defeated. Even though every house holds secrets, Sal’s mum has a theory that nobody who has lived ever really dies, and she believes her husband—who died when Sal was eleven—still inhabits the house. Sal’s house just seems unusually loud. Preoccupied with the idea that her husband’s spirit lingers in the house, she is convinced that she can hear his voice when the lights go out.
With twists and turns in its plot, as well as a romantic thread, The Other Ones by Fran Hart weaves a story about those who are branded outcasts because of their difficult-to-understand idiosyncrasies. While Sal accuses Asha of thinking too much, Asha claims Sal doesn’t think at all. Both young people are attempting to navigate their unique circumstances, ignoring the bad or pretending it just isn’t happening until Asha decides to make public one version of the truth.
Although Hart’s story reminds readers about the consequences of secret-keeping, it also shares a poignant truth about how we are all haunted by our pasts in some way. “Ghosts are made up of memories, and amplified by darkness” (193). Because death hits us all differently, the idea of ghosts can “become not something to be scared of but something to cling on to” (193).
- Donna