Review: We're Just Two Lost Souls Swimming In A Fish Bowl
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 10, 2012
THE LAND OF LATER ON by Anthony Weller offers a new interpretation to the ages-old conundrum, "What happens to us after we die?" the literary style of the prose could be off-putting to some readers who need an action word in every clause.  However, the tension here is more broad than merely learning who has done what to whom and how badly it hurt -- though there is some of that.  Instead, the larger value here is the controlled experiment performed by the author through his main character and narrator, Kip.Kip is searching through the afterlife for Lucy, both now memories to this world.  She is the love of his life and that is the whole of what matters to him.  Weller's experiment, then, poses this: "Does who we love and how we love them, matter?  And will it matter after this life has concluded?"The book is a rather knowing character study -- where the character is not really a particular individual but a relationship itself, spanning across decades of time and a multitude of distances throughout the mind and an after-life landscape as complicated and fraught with danger as is the land of the living."The world exists in all its infinite detail," Weller writes as Kip, "which, going through the motions, we ignore on a daily basis." Each reader may come to their own interpretation of this novel.  For me it is a wrestle with the infinite detail not just within our world but within our relationships.  The tiny apartment of Kip and Lucy is just a microcosm in the vastness of literature, music, space and history, but become elevated by exploding it outward to examine in slowed motion. We are shown all the moving parts of their storied history together and, thus, understand Kip's very specific drive to keep it alive -- even after his own death.In THE LAND OF LATER ON Weller has built a complex world, replete with a heritage of literary greats and musical references that contribute to the realness of such an unreal place.  For me, a weight lifted after reading. I might not know what exactly happens following death but I know I'm not alone in the eternal wonderings of it. And there's an enormous value in sharing *that* relationship with all of humanity.