By the time I reached page two of AFTERLIFE INC by A M Riley, I was laughing out loud. This is a funny, funny book.
Riley sets up this intriguing story as a comical look at post-death existence magnified through a Kafkaesque lens. The business of death here is administered by an office, aligning the banal inner functions of the workplace as a metaphor for the endless monotony of the infinite afterlife.
The tale follows the Grim Reaper himself as he regularly descends to the mortal realm to collect those who have passed away, pausing time as he does and briefly contemplating their tragic demise before cracking on with the job at hand. On one occasion, when he gathers up a tenacious fourteen-year old girl who dies too soon in tragic circumstances, it kicks off a sequence of events which, when looked back on from the end of the book feel inevitable.
There is real comedy in the way they navigate the bureaucracy of the afterlife, sorting people into Heaven and Hell, and dealing with God and Hades and others too funny to mention at the risk of spoiling the surprise.
In the final moments, as the story comes full-circle, it’s clear that there’s a seriousness here that’s poignant and powerful. Riley literally freeze-frames the moment of death for various individuals who are on the cusp of learning what the afterlife is, and as the familiarity of this process sinks in for us, you realise as a reader that you are witnessing over and over again a snapshot of grief, writ large like a three-dimensional hologram; a tableau to be examined and experienced from all angles. Powerful stuff.
By the time I reached the final page of this book I was genuinely moved by what I’d read. Life is fleeting and it’s to be cherished. A M Riley has poured his heart into this work and the result is something truly special.