While the premise requires large blocks of exposition, this tale ultimately offers an exuberant take on the afterlife.
A novel details one woman’s interactions with the dearly departed.
When Claire Anderson returns home from a canceled vacation, she is in for quite a surprise. Napoleon Bonaparte is sitting in her living room watching CNN. Soon Claire finds that the legendary leader is not the only unexpected guest: her kitchen contains Janis Joplin and Count Dracula. While an ordinary person would find such a scene deeply troubling, Claire is anxious but not completely flustered. She is a former afterlife coach and has seen this type of thing before. The details of this occupation are complex (and require a lengthy explanation) but it has essentially been Claire’s job to help troubled souls sort out issues from their lives and guide them to suitable places after they die. The catch is that Claire is retired from her vocation and she certainly did not anticipate such peculiar visitors. Will she be able to help these three disparate and needy individuals? After all, she is still dealing with the recent death of her husband; she has two teenage sons to worry about; and her promiscuous friend Karen Palmer has just become pregnant. The idea that such coaches exist makes for a unique, playful plot focusing on the possibility of life after death. Wouldn’t it be comforting (or perhaps annoying) to know that you may be able to work through problems you dealt with in life even after you died? The setup for Claire’s mission is inherently wacky and what sort of silliness a modern Joplin (who appears as a middle-aged Indian woman to non-coaches) will flaunt remains in flux (although the reader can assume, not incorrectly, that the rock star will still like alcohol). Certain circumstances can reach a little too far to be comedic, such as elderly people demanding affordable condoms at the behest of Joplin and Napoleon. But Paul’s (Snoop, 2013) story is at its best when indulging in the zany. Once the reader is onboard with the rules of Claire’s former position, there is no telling when all the kookiness will end and the deceased will recede to the pages of history.
While the premise requires large blocks of exposition, this tale ultimately offers an exuberant take on the afterlife.Pub Date: May 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5471-6674-9
Page Count: 330
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A lovely, painful book: Walker's finest work yet.
Walker (In Love and Trouble, Meridian) has set herself the task of an epistolary novel—and she scores strongly with it.
The time is in the Thirties; a young, black, Southern woman named Celie is the primary correspondent (God being her usual addressee); and the life described in her letters is one of almost impossible grimness. While young, Celie is raped by a stepfather. (Even worse, she believes him to be her real father.) She's made to bear two children that are then taken away from her. She's married off without her consent to an older man, Albert, who'd rather have Celie's sister Nettie—and, by sacrificing her body to Albert without love or feeling, Celie saves her sister, making it possible for her to escape: soon Nettle goes to Africa to work as a Christian missionary. Eventually, then, halfway through the book, as Celie's sub-literate dialect letters to God continue to mount (eventually achieving the naturalness and intensity of music, equal in beauty to Eudora Welty's early dialect stories), letters from Nettie in Africa begin to arrive. But Celie doesn't see them—because Albert holds them back from her. And it's only when Celie finds an unlikely redeemer—Albert's blues-singer lover Shug Avery—that her isolation ends: Shug takes Celie under her wing, becomes Celie's lover as well as Albert's; Shug's strength and expansiveness and wisdom finally free up Nettie's letters—thus granting poor Celie a tangible life in the now (Shug's love, encouragement) as well as a family life, a past (Nettie's letters). Walker fashions this book beautifully—with each of Celie's letters slowly adding to her independence (the implicit feminism won't surprise Walker's readers), with each letter deepening the rich, almost folk-tale-ish sense of story here. And, like an inverted pyramid, the novel thus builds itself up broadeningly while balanced on the frailest imaginable single point: the indestructibility—and battered-ness—of love.
A lovely, painful book: Walker's finest work yet.Pub Date: June 28, 1982
ISBN: 0151191549
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1982
BOOK REVIEW
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BOOK TO SCREEN
A fable about the consolatory and strengthening powers of religion flounders about somewhere inside this unconventional coming-of-age tale, which was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award. The story is told in retrospect by Piscine Molitor Patel (named for a swimming pool, thereafter fortuitously nicknamed “Pi”), years after he was shipwrecked when his parents, who owned a zoo in India, were attempting to emigrate, with their menagerie, to Canada. During 227 days at sea spent in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger (mostly with the latter, which had efficiently slaughtered its fellow beasts), Pi found serenity and courage in his faith: a frequently reiterated amalgam of Muslim, Hindu, and Christian beliefs. The story of his later life, education, and mission rounds out, but does not improve upon, the alternately suspenseful and whimsical account of Pi’s ordeal at sea—which offers the best reason for reading this otherwise preachy and somewhat redundant story of his Life.
Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-15-100811-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
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