After starting and stopping this book multiple times, I have finally made it all the way through! While I can see how the author wants to tie together the past and present threads of his life, everything felt disjointed to me. His present day ghost hunting didn't quite mesh with and reflect his own "ghost" experience, and his friendship with Laura never really felt clear and connected to the rest of his experiences. Maybe her disconnect and mysteriousness never really allowed me to grasp her impact on the author's life. A very odd book overall. ( )

I was put off by the misplaced modifier in the 2nd sentence of the book and it didn't get much better from there. This book didn't go anywhere or tell me anything. There was no back story to explain any of the incidents that the author related in the book. There was no conclusion to wrap it up. It was just a boring snapshot in time of the author's teenage years and an attempt to tie it to a time in his adult life. ( )

An honest and interesting account of the author dealing with his ghost phobia whilst being haunted.

However happily he lives his life now, with a beautiful wife, children, job and the essential American dream, Eric Nuzum remains troubled by his past. His close relationship with Laura and the relationship’s ultimate demise continues to upset him, and his experiences being haunted by a little girl in a blue dress have him avoiding anything remotely scary or ghost-related. After years of avoiding closed doors or spooky movies, Mr. Nuzum finally chooses to confront the otherworldly. Giving Up the Ghost is the documentation of his journey to determine the existence of ghosts and his moving tribute to his long-lost friend.

One of main issues with memoirs is the author’s reliability. All self-told stories will have some element of inaccuracies, and the trick is to determine whether this is deliberate or unconsciously wrought. Deliberate omissions are less acceptable even if they are understandable as no one wants to paint themselves in a horrible light. Thankfully, the deficiencies in Mr. Nuzum’s story do not appear to be calculated. Rather, a reader instinctively understands that much of what Mr. Nuzum discusses is so painful for him that any oversights are due to his inability to dig further into his psyche or into the past rather than a premeditated intent to deceive or omit facts.

That being said, as distressing as Mr. Nuzum’s past is for him, one cannot help but feel that there could have/ should have been more self-reflection. While he discusses his drug and alcohol abuse with nonchalance, Mr. Nuzum’s reasons for numbing himself to the world remain nebulous and unsatisfactory. There are indications that it was in large part due to his haunting by Little Girl, but this is more supposition on the part of the reader. Given how full of despair and hopelessness Mr. Nuzum is through much of his teenage years and the fact that he was able to overcome that to become a functional adult with family, friends, and a great job, one only wishes he would have dug a little deeper or explained a little more thoroughly as to his reasons behind his antisocial, self-destructive behavior.

However, the wish for more explanations about past behavior in no way diminishes a reader’s sympathy towards and enjoyment of Mr. Nuzum’s stark confessional and hunt for his personal ghosts. His ongoing love for Laura is as beautiful to behold as it is moving in its tragic demise. While his experiences highlight the fact that we can never truly understand or know another person, they also emphasize the essential need for friends. For it is his loneliness, however self-imposed, that ultimately leads to his downward spiral, and it is his unwavering friendship with Laura that brings him back to the functioning world again. No one can go through life without friends.

For those who remain dubious about ghosts, Mr. Nuzum’s conclusions about their existence are thought-provoking and poignant. While his searches among some of the nation’s most haunted locations yield nothing concrete to assuage his curiosity, he emerges from his experiences convinced that ghosts do exist but not in the forms people would technically consider. His journey to his final conclusions are breathtaking in their honesty and internal pain. Mr. Nuzum holds nothing back as he explains his past, his connection to Laura, and why he is so easily disturbed by the thought of spirits and otherworldly visitors. Giving Up the Ghost is a truly modern ghost story that is as upsetting and challenging as any memoir should be.

Acknowledgments: Thank you to LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers Program for my review copy!

Ten pages into this book, I was surprised to find that it was non-fiction. Seriously. I don't know if it was just me, but I definitely thought this was going to be a kind of literary paranormal/horror novel. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was a memoir though, and I was hooked right from the beginning.

Giving up the Ghost is about Eric Nuzum's search for answers. Since he was a boy, he'd been haunted by a ghost he called The Little Girl, and as he grew older, he became increasingly haunted by his friends and acquaintances that have died far too early in life, especially Laura -- a girl who was his best friend and whom he was in love with at one point. Nuzum explores the past by switching from past events and to the present, where he is actively searching for haunted places in order to find answers about The Little Girl, and possibly Laura.

The beginning hooked me and I found myself thoroughly enjoying this book. It's interesting, funny, and has some truly moving moments. I'm also a fan of dysfunctional stuff, and Nuzum certainly had a lot of that going on in his life. It's also very open and honest -- I almost felt like I was listening to a friend's confessional or something. Nuzum leaves everything on the page, which makes for a raw, emotional experience.

Though I think there could have been more organization in terms of letting the reader know when everything was taking place (dates at the beginning of chapters would have been helpful), I loved the back-and-forth between the past and present. Seeing the parallels and changes that have happened from Nuzum as a teenager to Nuzum as an adult was interesting, and it really helped move the story along.

I would have liked there to be more of a focus throughout the book. The beginning was really strong, I think, but it started to lag in the middle because of all the issues that Nuzum tried to tackle. And near the end, I wasn't sure what message I was supposed to be taking from his stories. Like I said before, Giving up the Ghost is about a search for answers, a search for the meaning behind past events. However, this sometimes gets lost in all Nuzum's stories about drugs, fits of rage, and dysfunctional relationships. Don't get me wrong -- they're good stories. And I think that they should definitely be told, but not necessarily in this book. It would have been much stronger and much more satisfying if the focus stayed on The Little Girl, his relationship with Laura, and his search for haunted places.

With that said, I still enjoyed it and I think it's a worthwhile read. I'm also very interested in reading more of Nuzum's work.

*I was provided a free copy from the publisher through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program in exchange for an honest review.* ( )