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It is the rare ghost story that selects a frat boy for its phantom.
Will Clarke has taken an unconventional approach to the genre in The Worthy, a devilishly funny follow-up to his fringe 2005 hit, Lord Vishnu's Love Handles: A Spy Novel (Sort Of).
His frat-boy protagonist, for one thing, is dead. He's also able to possess other people's bodies, which he likens to "sitting on a public toilet seat or something."
Conrad Avery Sutton III used to be a big man on campus until a bigger man on campus hurled him down the Gamma Chi stairs. The newly dead Conrad embarks on a quest for revenge that embroils his fraternity brothers, their girlfriends and even Miss Etta, the house's irascible cook who clocks overtime as the book's only character who isn't both rich and white.
The Worthy narrowly focuses on Louisiana State's Greek life, resulting in an expose that is relentless to the point of claustrophobia.
Its best parts lie in its insider details, and we soon realize that the real murder victim is the self-respect of the pledges.
The hazing events are undeniably cruel: The young men are forced to shave their heads, crawl over broken glass, practice the most intimate forms of animal husbandry and stumble blindfolded into the woods only to be beaten. The horror of their experiences makes for the novel's most riveting passages.
Clarke has written a quick read that has the vapid glide of a teen movie and all the respect for life of a slasher flick. His characters are interesting yet shallow, with little more complexity than what is revealed within their first few crackling lines of dialogue.
It's no surprise The Worthy has been optioned by Columbia Pictures. The book is perfect for 20-year-olds who don't like books.
Conrad makes for a tricky narrator, and not just because he's a poltergeist. Despite his unconvincing epiphany toward the end, one wonders: Is he ever truly critical of the fraternity culture?
But if it weren't for Clarke's equivocal insights, The Worthy would just have been a sequence of plot events that never quite jells into a meaningful narrative. Readers will be left wondering at a system in which 18-year-olds' lives are left "in the hands of boys -- boys who are fueled by hot, raging hormones and cheap, cold beer."
Eliot Schrefer is the author of Glamorous Disasters.
The Worthy
By Will Clarke
Simon & Schuster
240 pp., $23
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