Three star review, originally posted here on January 31st, 2025.
What an absolutely spectacular premise, with such disappointing execution.
I’m not going to say anything here that isn’t already mentioned in other reviews. The general idea here is great, and after the 1st chapter, I thought this might just be a wonderful read. I was even thinking I’d found something to recommend to my brother-in-law to make up for all of his favorites that I pan (oh God- hopefully this isn’t another one of his favorites!) But once we set up the premise, the actual “plot” begins, and then everything just gets super boring.
Despite being bored out of my mind, though, I’m still giving this book a neutral 3 stars. It still brought up lots of interesting concepts from time to time. The whole idea is that, after we die in this life, we go to a second life, and you stay there for as long as somebody back in the previous life remembers us. So, most people disappear after after about 60 years (as long as it takes for a grandkid to remember you). But some people just kinda blip in and out. And others stick around for centuries (we never meet these people, but presumably we’re talking famous historical figures? I dunno- this is exactly the kind of thing I would have preferred to read about instead of the book we actually got). The population of this second world is suddenly shrinking, and everyone pieces together from context that there’s been some sort of pandemic on earth and everyone there is dead. There’s a sole survivor wandering around Antarctica, and eventually the people in the afterlife realize that this one random person is the one who remembers them and is keeping them alive.
So this has us thinking, how many people do we remember? How connected are we on this planet? Who do we remember or not remember from any of our hundreds of seen faces every day? And if we’re reunited with a loved one in the afterlife, but that loved one has a whole new life now because they’ve been dead for a couple decades without you, what is that reconnection like? IF your relationship was strained, is it still strained? If it was once romantic but lost its spark, is the spark magically back? Good stuff, right? Whenever we were piecing together or discussing these issues, the book got back to being semi-interesting. But not actually interesting.
With such an imaginative premise, I was hoping for an imaginative plot. I was thinking how interesting it would be to maybe have a chapter for each person in this second life. But that’s not what we do. And I was thinking about how interesting all these questions are about memory and connection. But the book only mentions them without jumping in. So, sadly, I was bored and disappointed because the premise set the bar way too high.
Helga without the H 