Growing Up Psychic: From Skeptic to Believer

Fans of based-in-reality psychic family TV drama Medium, or anyone who wished Running With Scissors had more ghosts, will be gratified with this memoir from professional psychic Bodine, who grew up with a psychic mom and sister in a house full of spirits. Happily, the paranormal isn't Bodine's primary focus; among relatively few instances of psychic phenomenon, Bodine's account is an absorbing family drama featuring a mother suddenly enraptured with the beyond; a wealthy father who leaves his wife and four children; Bodine's own pre-teen descent into drugs and alcohol; and, ultimately, personal redemption and fulfillment. Most striking is Bodine's sense of loneliness and abandonment; he makes it seem almost natural when he embraces a friendship with Jerry, a dead boy who chooses to be Bodine's spirit guide, but who reads like an increasingly malevolent imaginary friend. Still, Bodine's narrative can meander, and occasionally skips over important-seeming events without explanation (""My therapist tried to have sex with me which completely freaked me out so I stopped seeing him""). Though it won't turn any skeptics into believers, Bodine's tale should capture the imagination of the open-minded.