Review: Uplifting, but long winded in places
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 27, 2014
A carefully crafted, eloquent story about the afterlife and a grieving mother left behind.Her son in heaven, explores his new environment,finding comfort in being reunited with his dead grandparents. The book is filled with vivid descriptions and the sense of depression of both main characters comes through the pages easily.I wasn't quite sure what the purpose of the story was, yes it was uplifting in that Heaven exists and the teenager eventually starts to explore his new life. However, the quiet grief of his mother, who seems to be just going through the motions of life after the death of her only child was heart-wrenching, and I think the book would have worked without the mother's story being told in such detail.The pace of the book was a definite stumbling point, for example 7 pages of following the mother in a book shop while she tries to find a book to fill her now empty life. After all the slow, very detailed descriptions of daily life, I felt a little cheated at the end that I didn't get to see the big reunion between the main characters at the end of her life.I found the author's version of Heaven interesting, but reading about Theresa's grief and hopeless plodding through life was distinctly uncomfortable.