'Well, it was hard to be angry with you when you were alive. It's better now that you're dead. You seem happier to be a ghost. Nothing I say can hurt you.'
Just when Leah Rubin is enjoying some peace, her mother is back, arguing from the grave.
Leah's father, very much alive, sends her pages of bad jokes in lieu of conversation.
With her life now in turmoil, burdened by a moody psychiatrist and disapproving daughters, Leah realises the only way forward is back, tackling a long trail of unfinished business.
Samovar is a story of unquiet souls, both ghostly and real, wrestling with the silence and pain of their own history. Biting, warm and extremely funny, it is a book both as intimate and as universal as the family itself.