Here Goes Nothing
The wildly original new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of A Fraction of the Whole
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3.9 • 7 Ratings
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- £2.99
Publisher Description
'One of the funniest and most original writers at work today' The Times
A firecracker of a novel by the Booker-shortlisted author of A Fraction of the Whole - a scathingly funny and affecting tale of life, death, love and the questionable existence of God.
Angus Mooney is not happy - he's been murdered, cut off in the prime of his life. He feels humiliated - he's never even believed in an afterlife. (How wrong he'd been). He's confused - death has provided more questions than answers. And he desperately misses his audacious and fiery wife, Gracie, who's expecting their first child.
The only upside is that Angus has found a way to see what his murderer is up to, and how Gracie is faring. The downside: Gracie and his murderer are getting uncomfortably close, and a worldwide pandemic means the afterlife is about to get very crowded . . .
'Toltz takes his time with each book and Here Goes Nothing is a funny, clever, entertaining argument in favour of cultivating the patience to get it right' Guardian
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The clever latest from Toltz (Quicksand) follows a hapless husband who discovers that the afterlife is a bewildering, bureaucratic bore. Angus Mooney excels only at petty crime, laziness, and loving his pregnant wife, Gracie, a quirky wedding officiant. Despite their marital bliss, the couple is perennially short on cash, so when a stranger dying of brain disease offers to make Angus and Gracie his heirs in exchange for letting him die in their house, they agree. Shortly after the stranger moves in, he murders Angus, sending him to a banal afterlife, where he works at an umbrella factory and his fellow citizens complain of housing shortages and an ill-defined ongoing war. Finding death too much like life and missing Gracie, Angus becomes addicted to a machine that allows him to haunt his old home. He observes the dying man trying to seduce Gracie, who remains ignorant of how Angus really died, and he learns about the spread of a lethal virus that threatens to overwhelm the afterlife. Toltz's wit and black humor transform a morbid premise into a rollicking ride. The result is an audaciously creative imagining of what awaits after death.
