The Afterlives

A Novel

By: Thomas Pierce

Narrated by: Thomas Pierce, Kirsten Potter

"Ridiculously good" (The New York Times) author Thomas Pierce's debut novel is a funny, poignant love story that answers the question: What happens after we die? (Lots of stuff, it turns out.)

Jim Byrd died. Technically. For a few minutes. The diagnosis: heart attack at age 30. Revived with no memory of any tunnels, lights, or angels, Jim wonders what—if anything—awaits us on the other side.

Then a ghost shows up. Maybe. Jim and his new wife, Annie, find themselves tangling with holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond, and a machine that connects the living and the dead. As Jim and Annie journey through history and fumble through faith, they confront the specter of loss that looms for anyone who dares to fall in love.

Funny, fiercely original, and gracefully moving, The Afterlives will haunt you. In a good way.

©2018 Thomas Pierce (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"In Thomas Pierce’s warm and inventive debut novel, The Afterlives, reality is slippery, time is out of joint and profound disorientation is a feature of daily existence. In other words, pretty much how the world feels to a lot of us right now... Pierce is brilliant at painting an entire life - encompassing passion, missed opportunities, tragedy - in a few pages. He also isn’t afraid to pose the biggest questions: How do we deal with loss? What are the limits and possibilities of love? What is the nature of time?" (New York Times Book Review)

“[A] touching, thought-provoking debut novel… Part love story and part speculative sci-fi, it’s a meandering, albeit meaningful, look at marriage, technology and ghosts.” (USA Today)

"Fascinating... [Pierce’s] work has a quirky sensibility that recalls Lorrie Moore or George Saunders, an ability to bring the unquestionably weird into the path of daily life without ever seeming forced.… A fluid, funny writer." (Financial Times)

Starts off strong...

...and gets weaker with every passing chapter, ending on, "Well, I guess 3 stars overall because at least I wasn't ever bored."

I was immediately engaged in the story, the questions the novel raises, the tone, and the narrator of the story (Jim)--though the audible narrator was really good too. Right away, tone-wise it "felt" like Sourdough by Robin Sloan or This Was Not the Plan by Christina Alger.

But as it went on I cared less and less what happened to Jim and the other main character, in part because of the flashbacks that inform the ghost story part of the book. These flashbacks seem plunked in at random, and worse are told both in the present tense and past tense. When a story is told in the past tense (this one is), flashbacks in the present tense are extremely distracting. And doing flashbacks in both present and past tense? What was the point of that? Additionally, there is one section of flashbacks that cover the span of 90 years. Oh, here's a paragraph in the 50s, followed by one in the present, here's one in the 70s, here's one in the 50s...and so on. It felt confusing and pointless.

The other reason I became less interested was when Jim and Annie go to find this particular "thing," and think they have indeed found it, I didn't see why they would believe they found it. I read a lot of sci fi, so I know an author can make sense of a concept to the reader, but this author...I'm not really sure if he cared about that. He just cared that his characters found what they were looking for. I would believe they were satisfied with what they found, but it didn't seem to me they found the "thing" they were actually looking for.

You know, sometimes it's a real pain to write without spoilers because you can't really cite examples!

My favorite book of 2018!

I truly loved and enjoyed this book! I am left with lots of unanswered questions... but I am also the type that is absolutely ok with that. I thought it was well written, well read, and thought-provoking. I loved that the story and the flashbacks/glimpses were not strictly linear. The characters were well developed and very easily relatable. Nice piece of fiction to dip your toes into deep existential quandaries regarding the death, afterlife, and our presence in the present.

I have no idea what point of this book was?

Super slow, confusing and i am wondering what the last chapters (music and different narrator) even had to do with the story. If someone can please explain this all to me (including the end of chapter 15 as well, i would be very appreciative. Seriously, sotting here scratching my head right now...

I didn't get it

This wasn't necessarily a bad book, but it wasn't for me. In my opinion, it's an excellent example of a "literary fiction" book being lauded for attempting to do something that genre fiction accomplishes more effectively---this book danced around the edges of an interesting idea but then didn't go anywhere with it. I was genuinely disappointed by how it fell flat emotionally for me. There were lots of minor characters popping up in nonlinear ways that never felt completely justified, and I wasn't engaged enough with the overall concept to care much about what happened to them. After reading reviews, I was hoping for a book in the category of "The Book of Speculation" by Erika Swyler and "Every Anxious Wave" by Mo Daviau. If you're feeling unsatisfied by this book, I'd recommend checking those two out.