What would you do with the ability to slip out of your body and prowl the world undetected? The possibilities for crime, mischief or adventure seem limitless, especially for a restless teenager. One night Kit, the introspective narrator of Rowan Hisayo Buchanan’s third novel, rises from her bed in the room shared with younger brother Leo, but realises with a shock that her unresponsive body is still tucked up. Exploring this new freedom, Kit chances to peek at the hidden recesses of her parents’ marriage, but how to interpret the scene is a puzzle that will consume her.
Just as disruptive poltergeist activity is associated with adolescence, Kit’s out-of-body experiences coincide with a burgeoning sexuality and growing impatience with parental restriction. In literary terms, there is another entity capable of melting through walls and drifting about unseen, and that’s an omniscient narrator. But Kit can only observe on her night-time travels; she can’t penetrate minds, grasp thoughts or read motives, which due to her lack of emotional experience, remain deeply obscure. At her most vulnerable and questioning, she witnesses something disturbing in the dynamic between her quiet, undemonstrative mother (of Japanese heritage, like previous Buchanan characters) and ebullient musician father. “I wondered if I’d got something wrong … If the things I had barely seen were a secret code between the two people I knew best.”
