Hilarious, thought-provoking, depressing, disturbing, insightful…
There are countless adjectives that could describe this book. David Eagleman compiled forty short essays on what the afterlife could be, and each one had me going “Huh…”
I think the tale that spoke to me the most was Subjunctive, one of the stories toward the end of the book. In the afterlife you are weighed and measured against all possible versions of yourself. Both the good (the most successful, in-shape, loving, etc.) and the bad (the couch potato, lecher, addict, etc.).
How would you socialize with all the versions of who you could have been? Will you be proud of where you fell on the spectrum? Will you be depressed with how low you ended in your life?
It’s a haunting story, as are many of the others in this volume. It’s an easy-to-consume book because the stories are short enough to start and finish one in a sitting. Highly recommended.