If statues could speak, would you want to hear what they have to say?

kw: book reviews, fantasy

It is some years now since I got over my youthful dread of cemeteries. Now I wonder... Not really!! Steven Stromp attempts to question the basis of every religious notion common to the Judeo-Christian culture, with his first novel, Cracking Grace. The title appears to refer to the collapse of a couple of pieces of staturary as they release spirits trapped within (But I'm not totally sure).

In this world, humans are the only animals that can't converse with the statues, and a ghost or two, that inhabit a cemetary. A young girl, the cemetary caretaker's daughter, has just lost her mother untimely, and her father is in ever-deeper denial about it. Denied ordinary friendship, she becomes aware of a ghost and can talk with it, and through it, to the statues, and to a bluebird.

In this world, the people, the priests, the statues, and the animals are equally ignorant of the meaning of death or life. The answer the author presents is "staging", and the novel ends with a few spirits that are ready entering a new stage. Well, it bears more resemblance to spiritualism than anything remotely Christian. That makes sense in this New-Age-addled generation.