The Extra Large Medium - Softcover

Annie Colville sees dead people, and in British television and scriptwriter Slavin's debut, the dead wear chocolate brown while inhabiting the "Waiting Room of Heaven World," which overlaps with the everyday "Living Room World" that the rest of us see. The ghosts reach out to Annie to enlist her in tidying up unfinished—and mundane as often as unconventional—business: which niece should get the Wedgwood teapot, which romantic path a lesbian daughter should follow. Annie also has problems of her own: her husband, Evan Bees, disappeared seven years ago, and though he's assumed dead, Annie hasn't seen him among the cocoa-clad (the countdown to when Annie can have him declared legally dead provides the book's time line); her quest to discover which of her mother's many lovers is her father is leaden with disappointment; and some ghosts prove to be more haunting than others. Annie endears herself to the reader, in part because her gift exhausts her more than it elevates her, and also because she embodies a genuine purity of heart that, in lesser hands, would be cloying. (May)
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"A funny, offbeat debut that won't let you go." -- Fanny Blake

"A very, very good novel. Not a wasted word. Helen Slavin is a highly original talent." -- Beryl Bainbridge

"A very original, off-beat novel full of bizarre twists and turns and colorful characters that just won't let you go." -- Sue Stevenson

"The narrative voice is . . . no-nonsense, warm, and witty. . . . Both ƯAnnie¨ and the book are unassuming and disarming." -- Zoe Paxton

"Helen Slavin's wicked sense of humor and vivid imagination lift this debut above most examples of the currently popular 'life after death' genre."

"Is this the most quirky, bizarre, black-humored left-field ghost-story social commentary you will see this year? Certainly it will hit the bookshelves with a bang." -- Graham Clark

"There is strange comfort in this book, full of visitors from beyond the grave. . . . Helen Slavin can strip characters without a shred of nastiness. This debut is the oddball antidote to the psychic adverts that lurk in the inside of every glossy gossip magazine." -- Michael McGirr