Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... After Life (edition 2001)by Rhian Ellis
Work InformationAfter Life by Rhian Ellis
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. From the arresting opening passage to the bittersweet epilogue, After Life kept me entranced; I had trouble putting this book down. The cast of characters could have been kooky caricatures in less skillful hands, but instead they were real people with ambitions and problems and hygiene issues. The mystery aspect was deftly handled as to keep me riveted, and despite her questionable reliability, I cared deeply for our narrator and what would become of her. I couldn't help make connections to Shirley Jackson's Merricat Blackwood along the way. Jackson fans will find a home here. Here's a memorable first line: "First I had to get his body into the boat." The narrator is Naomi Ash, a practicing medium (and library cataloger), who isn't necessarily likable but seriously fascinating. This book is creepy with an element of mystery--though this is not a whodunit but a whydunit. Note: This is a Nancy Pearl Book Lust Rediscoveries pick, and I received a free copy from an Amazon book event back in Oct 2012. Slow with an Unlikable Heroine AFTER LIFE is the hardest book for me to rate since I've begun reading and reviewing books on Amazon KIndle. Brian Ellis is a sumptuous writer: her descriptions are luscious and full and evocative; her analogies stunning. But there is much more to novel_-making than gorgeous writing, and that's called story, and to a lesser extent, character. There really is no story here. Ellis starts us off with a bang, then leaves us hanging for most of the rest of the book- dying of boredom amidst her beautiful prose. And what about character? No one really to root much for here- not even the dead guy. The mother- daughter relationship, to me, simply never develops. And as for Naomi...oh, my. Perhaps a spoiler alert, but some of her actions toward Peter, the boyfriend she accidentally- yes, it was an accident, kills are horrendous- arguably far worse than the so-called called crime itself as that was, in fact as stated, an accident in the middle of a fight. Naomi messes with the guys head; and then her actions afterward- the cover-up are truly inexcusable. And inexplicable. She has no arc. And why, in God's name does not ONE of all these psychics pick up on this in TEN years! Are they all protecting her? All fakes? Ellis can't seem to make up her line-up especially about the Mom, which leaves the whole book wobbly. But there is that writing! For that reason alone, I will certainly search out this author for other work. Her writing is something you can feast on. I hope she developed her storytelling after this one. no reviews | add a review
Naomi Ash was born in New Orleans and raised by her mother, Patsy, a medium who schooled her young daughter in the parlor-trick chicanery of the trade. From Naomi recreating presences with table cloths to providing the voice of the dead by talking through a fan, their act is part theater, part magic, and a little too much playing with the letter of the law. Eventually they must beat a hasty--and forced--retreat from New Orleans, relocating to Train Line, New York.A sleepy village founded and inhabited by others with a spiritualist bent, Train Line is populated with card readers, table levitators, and crystal-shop owners. Low-rent "Psychic Faires" are held at the local Holiday Inn, and Patsy's newest creation, "The Mother Galina Psychic Hour," is on the local radio station. The town is a curious mix between old school "table rappers" and the New Age, and it is here that Naomi comes of age, learns the trade, and falls in love. But love is not only a many splendored thing--it can be dangerous as well. And for a young woman caught between fraud and truth, between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and between the secrets and lies of her youth, the past and present will come together in a rush of truth and consequence.Hailed as "a study of eccentricities, which rises above the merely quirky to address those issues of life, death, memory, and love that preoccupy us all," After Life is a stunning first novel of extraordinary suspense and evocative imagery. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.6Literature English (North America) American fiction 21st CenturyLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14428538
A strange little story about a woman who grows up with mediums and other "spiritual" characters, who live together in a shabby little town. When people want their palms read, their past lives elucidated, to hear from their grandparents, they find someone in Train Line. Naomi grows up with a mother who works as a medium and in her youth she assisted her by pretending to be various dead children in the dark. So she knows much of it is fakery.
It's a bit of a shock when she discovers she has some actual kind of gift in this area.
She then accidentally does something that solidifies her place in the spiritual world but also makes her an outlaw in the earthly world. And she has to get away. ( )