This is a conventional ghost story because it is about a boy being haunted by a ghost. It is an unconventional ghost story because it is not scary, nor is it trying to be. The boy is never scared, just irritated and put out. He only really starts to get scared when something terrible nearly happens to someone else.

James Harrison is being haunted by the ghost of Thomas Kempe, a sorcerer who lived in his house hundreds of years before. Now as a ghost he wishes to reestablish himself as a sorcerer, with James as his apprentice. Leaving messages for James, committing odd acts of vandalism in the town and making a poltergeisty nuisance of himself around the house, he gets James in worse and worse trouble. James needs to get rid of Thomas Kempe, and soon.

This is a very funny book, and most of the humour comes from James: imaginative, self-centred but utterly prosaic and completely sure of himself. James is difficult in terms of creating messes and trouble and getting into scrapes, but he isn't mean, except perhaps a little to his sister. He's a sort of slightly less Williamy Just William, but Williamy enough to cause headaches. What happens over the course of the book, particularly after James discovers the journal of a woman and her nephew similarly haunted, is an odd, subtle growth. James' prodigious but self-absorbed imagination begins the process of transformation into empathy and awareness. It's sweet and touching as James forms a curious bond with two people long dead and begins to see the people around him as more than they appear.

A subtle, witty book, sharply written, and the combination of sharp subtle wit is irresistible. Its exploration of a young boy awakening to the world around him, the world of other people who are at first almost like supernatural things from another time, is warm and wonderful and wise.