Review: Evocative and tender exploration of life, death, and the after-life... well worth the read!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 21, 2013
"Death was never the end, only the beginning to a life everlasting." ~C. D. Loza, 'Life Everlasting'This book was so tender, and nuanced, I cried more than once reading this story.Filipino  author C. D. Loza has written a strange, compelling and evocative novel which explores a recently dead teen's experience in the after life and his parents continuing experience on earth.This book is truly a gem for so many reasons. Though it appears that English is not the author's first language... the issues with tenses, or grammatical deviations, are hardly worth noting and did not detract from the read.The story and descriptions are near riveting. Unlike many page turners, this story is deeply descriptive and will elicit emotion in the reader. The protagonists (primarily) are a recently dead teenage boy and his parents, who are alive and well on earth.The author's prose is so rich and descriptive, that reading the book felt like a journey to Manila and the Philippines and the beauty of a particular lush and beautiful heaven. The countryside and conventions, dynamics and interactions, of family was well-described."She simply needed to survive the next minute and then the next, until the minutes became hours and the hours became days," writes Loza. This hauntingly beautiful sentence, describes the grief of the main character's mother and so much of this book is about grief, love and love lost and how grieving can ravage the human heart.'The sacrifices she made gave her an excuse not to take too many risks.' ~C. D. Loza, 'Life Everlasting'As you may intuit from the sentence above, there is much wisdom in this book... the kind of wisdom gained after a lifetime of living and loving. Like a dependable companion, who offers a certain type of solace, this is definitely a book that I will return to in the future.Some of the chapters I enjoyed the most are the forty-nine year old mother's experiences, largely solitary, as she grieves the death of her child and struggles to continue her life find her place in the world (having recently relocated to Florida with her extremely distant husband). This author has written an entirely believable female character, no easy feat.In a certain sense, this book is about living and dying. It is the story of a mother and son, her distant husband, father to the boy, and their extended grasping, entangled family. It is partially set in "The City of Man," the capital city and the second largest city of the Philippines. This book is also a lovely exploration of what might come after death; I especially enjoyed the description of the book of life/life review, which the teen experienced after adjusting to his "first heaven." While some of the ideas of what comes after are unlike my own, and the teenage son exhibited an almost nihilistic anger at the creator, the universe, and life, the story was generally about healing one's relationship to reality.C.D. Loza is one of those authors that, if he continues to write novels, will most certainly have a breakout novel and find his audience (whether than breakout novel is this, or another, book). Definitely a writer to watch.This is a book to read and then re-read, in a decade, when you have grown into a different person. Think #afterlife #death #angel. Happy reading~*