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NOW THAT I'M DEAD

Name: NOW THAT I'M DEAD
Author: A. Lee Bruno
ISBN: 978-1-5233-0341-0

by A. Lee Bruno ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2016

An imaginative, if sometimes tedious, look at the great beyond.

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A supernatural novel focuses on the peculiarities of life after death.

Bruno (Pensacola Reset, 2014) presents Fiona Campbell, a protagonist who in the opening pages of this extensive story is dead. But readers need not panic, because Fiona’s adventure is just beginning. She continues to exist in a nontraditional afterlife. There is no heaven or hell and Fiona can traverse the earthly plane. The major change is that her body is gone and now she is an AtCon, short for atomic configuration. Fiona can speak to other AtCons telepathically and she can even create a holographic image of herself. Soon she comes into contact with an AtCon named Jonas Smith. Jonas is a slave who died in the 1800s and he has used his time as an AtCon to do everything from completing university courses to attending professional baseball games. Fiona meets other AtCons (who are able to form into groups called Pods) and, although being dead doesn’t seem quite so bad, a number of questions arise. Shouldn’t there be more AtCons around? Can the AtCons exploit their abilities for good? Although Fiona initially uses her new existence to confront a difficult past, her mission eventually becomes a matter of facing the future. All in all, the tale offers a creative take on the afterlife. Could it be that a number of invisible souls are congregating in the stands to watch major league baseball games? It is something to ponder, though much of the dialogue is not quite so thought-provoking. Characters, whether alive or dead, tend to say obvious things, as when Jonas compliments Fiona by communicating telepathically: “You have a phenomenal ability to analyze information and come to logical conclusions.” But while the text can be clogged with Pod meetings to discuss the AtCons’ next moves (boring meetings, it seems, continue beyond the grave), the book delivers a refreshing exploration of the possibilities in the hereafter. Now that Fiona is dead, she can do just about whatever she pleases. What will she achieve with such a privilege?

An imaginative, if sometimes tedious, look at the great beyond.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-5233-0341-0

Page Count: 240

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2018

Review Program: Kirkus Indie

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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SUMMER ISLAND

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2001

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

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Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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LAST ORDERS

by Graham Swift ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 5, 1996

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Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.