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Overview
There is a life after death, but only for the terminally cool. . . .
Jo-Jo Dyas doesn't believe he has any reason to live, but then he finds the surprisingly lively dead girl in the culvert and she convinces him otherwise. She and her punk band, the Fiendish Lot, come from the Afterlife, a strange, colorless place where souls sometimes pause on the journey between this world and the next. When Jo-Jo follows her there, he gets a chance to make right all the things that have gone wrong in his life . . . but only if he can figure out how before he fades away into nothing. Maybe the answer lies in Jo-Jo's late-breaking realization: Being alive is kind of cool.
Rude, raw, and blisteringly funny, Andrew Auseon's new novel is like one of those insanely catchy songs that you can't forget and won't want to. So pay attention: The afterlife you save may be your own.
Synopsis
There is a life after death, but only for the terminally cool. . . . Jo-Jo Dyas doesn't believe he has any reason to live, but then he finds the surprisingly lively dead girl in the culvert and she convinces him otherwise. She and her punk band, the Fiendish Lot, come from the Afterlife, a strange, colorless place where souls sometimes pause on the journey between this world and the next. When Jo-Jo follows her there, he gets a chance to make right all the things that have gone wrong in his life . . . but only if he can figure out how before he fades away into nothing. Maybe the answer lies in Jo-Jo's late-breaking realization: Being alive is kind of cool. Rude, raw, and blisteringly funny, Andrew Auseon's new novel is like one of those insanely catchy songs that you can't forget and won't want to. So pay attention: The afterlife you save may be your own.Editorials
VOYA -
Nothing is right in the life of Jonathan Joseph Dyas—Jo-Jo to his dead girlfriend, nonexistent friends, and emotionally distant family. His planned suicide goes awry, interrupted by his discovery of a dead girl—a very bossy, talkative, and mobile dead girl named Max. Jo-Jo decides to see where the weirdness takes him as he helps Max dig up—literally—her band mates for a day of band practice in the "real world." Max, Penny, Ed, and Wes are the Fiendish Lot, the biggest band in the afterlife, and Jo-Jo's brief exposure to these denizens of the hereafter comes in handy after his untimely and unplanned death. But knowing folks only gets you so far, and it will be up to Jo-Jo to figure out whether he can do better with his death than he did with his life. Auseon, author of Funny Little Monkey (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005/VOYA June 2005), envisions a life after death drained of any color or emotion except for the embers of each person's "sol." Those who find their way to this afterlife have two choices: live the best death possible or fade away into nothingness. Auseon is a skilled writer, but the oft-repeated conceit, paired with the unlikeable Jo-Jo, might be a stumbling block for many readers. Gritty details, grim humor, and masses of gloom ensure that only mature readers with a bent towards the sardonic are likely to find this nonetheless well-crafted story appealing. Reviewer: Catherine Gilmore-CloughSchool Library Journal
Gr 9 Up
Distraught over his girlfriend's murder, Jo-Jo, 17, takes a gun to a secluded Baltimore ravine to kill himself. He discovers a naked dead girl who disturbingly wakes up, introduces herself as Max, and hauls Jo-Jo along to meet her dead friends, members of the Fiendish Lot, the most popular punk band in the Afterlife returning to Earth to test out their new material. Jo-Jo accidentally shoots himself and dies, waking up in the Afterlife where he reunites with the band and accompanies them on tour. In this gloomy place of second chances, the dead can search for their true purpose. Realizing that he squandered his life, Jo-Jo focuses on finding Violet, but his devotion is clouded by his feelings for sarcastic Max. Auseon's darkly humorous novel is outrageously inventive, chaotically plotted, overly long, and ultimately unsatisfying. Details of the Afterlife are intriguing, like the deads' bright interior "sols" that provide the only color in an otherwise monochromatic world. Despite a clever premise, too many random plot jumps derail the story, like Jo-Jo's stint in the Afterlife jail, and are dropped with little development. Vivid characters like Max's grandfather (whose sol literally burns out) are introduced and then abandoned, and attention given to the Fiendish Lot's sol-reviving performances is far too meager. Wildly imaginative and entertaining ideas and images here, sadly in need of focus.-Joyce Adams Burner, National Archives at Kansas City, MO