“Ghost Town,” by Tom Perrota, Simon & Schuster, 2026.
In early 1970s New Jersey, tragedy afflicts 13-year-old Jimmy Perrini’s world. Over the decades that ensue, he becomes Jay Perry, a successful writer who keeps his childhood trauma safely locked away from his readers and himself. Or so he believes. As Tom Perrotta writes in his new novel “Ghost Town,” Jay’s childhood is full of ghosts that won’t stay quiet. He ultimately realizes that the only way to heal is to confront them — even the creepy one that lurked in the back seat of an old Chevy Vega.
Most of the novel is told through flashbacks to a few fateful months in Jimmy’s life, as Perrotta evokes a bygone industrial suburbia with an unsentimental nostalgia tinged by melancholy. He notes that Jimmy’s fictional hometown, Creamwood, is arrayed with houses that look the same and that are peopled by white families who do and like the same things. Jimmy blends in, until grief alienates him from the social order. As he drifts through his summer, pulling away from his friends, he begins to perceive things he never used to notice, such as the racist behavior of a teacher, and identifies with the town’s outcasts.
He meets Eddie, a burnout who spends most of his time driving aimlessly in a car inherited from a relative with a shady past. He also meets Olivia, a beautiful, troubled valedictorian with a Ouija board. Through these relationships, Jimmy is thrust prematurely into adult situations. He finds himself unexpectedly encountering what seem to be literal ghosts along the way — along with bigger questions around racism and war that continue to haunt society.
Events unfold with the slow, hazy time warp of summer vacation. Jimmy plays baseball and volunteers with younger kids at the Rec Center. He buys weed at a McDonald’s and comes close to losing his virginity. His chapters are told in third person and feel like pages in an old album full of Polaroids.
We return to Jay in the present day only a few times in the book. The transition to brisk first-person narration in these chapters can feel abrupt, but it’s an effective device to show how much he’s changed. Jay is no longer the dreamy kid he used to be, but while he’s successful, he’s unfulfilled. He’s made a fortune off a series of “Ghost Teacher” books for kids, but he has avoided writing about his own ghosts. Then he accepts an invitation to give a reading at an event honoring his late father. Reluctantly, he decides the time has come to tell his story — which we ultimately come to understand is what we’re getting in the Jimmy chapters.
Even though we’re deep in Jimmy’s point of view in these chapters, it is at times apparent that we’re seeing his story filtered through 60-something Jay’s memories. For example, Jimmy’s maybe-girlfriend and his best friend, who may be seeing her on the sly, play only slight walk-on roles. While Jimmy would likely have been obsessed with them, Jay knows that they really weren’t that important in the grand scheme of his life. And he acknowledges that his telling of a climactic moment in Jimmy’s story may be unreliable.
“Ghost Town” is a slow burn, not recommended for anyone looking for a page-turning thriller. But Perrotta’s clean, economical prose does a lot of work below the surface. His mother died while he was writing the book, and it shows. Jimmy’s struggles with grief — blended as they are with disillusionment and typical adolescent struggles — feel deeply relatable.
And Perrotta’s ghosts are vividly described and haunting presences that leave a mark, whether or not we believe they are real or manifestations of Jimmy’s trauma.
Perrotta is a master craftsman. If, like me, it’s your first encounter with him, just know you’ll be seeking more of his writing.
A stronger
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