The Writers Afterlife
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Writers Afterlife is the story of Tom Chillo, a 44-year-old writer on the verge of fame, who suddenly dies of a stroke and finds himself transported to a place where all writers are sent after they die. After mingling with “The Eternals” — including Shakespeare, Wilde, Keats, and Tolstoy — he discovers that his true peers in this new world are all haunted by the same regret: they never achieved the fame they felt they deserved during their lifetime. There’s still a chance, though. Every writer has the opportunity to return to earth for exactly one week and convince someone to set the wheels in motion to give their life’s work widespread notoriety. The trick is to come up with the perfect plan the first time. Failure is not an option. The Writers Afterlife is brimming with warm humor, New York street sensibility, and an underlying commentary about the drive for fame in contemporary culture. With a deft hand, Vetere explores the deceptions that people employ to achieve at all costs. A string of eccentric New York characters fly off the page and make for a striking, memorable book that is a delight to read.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this utterly unique story, novelist Vetere (The Third Miracle) unfolds a caper of inter-dimensional scope. Recently deceased semi-successful writer, Tom Chillo finds himself in a special corner of the afterlife designed for writers. Having fallen short of the standards that would allow him into the pantheon of Immortal Writers, and jealous of the amenities that those souls enjoy, he formulates a plan to revisit this earth in a desperate effort to ensure the permanence of his tenuous literary legacy. Returning in disguise, he encounters editors, critics, and his former lover, now acting as his literary executrix, and attempts to manipulate them into actions that would posthumously grant him that immortality. The scenes taking place in afterlife are written with classic magic-realist gusto; those taking place on earth will have readers rooting for Chillo's success, despite evidence that the character's writing talent is less than deserving of the sort of immortality he seeks. In short, if you are at all intrigued by this description of the high-concept premise, chances are that its execution in this novel will charm you as well.
