The Afterlife

From the Publisher

"Soto writes with a touch as light as Chuy's ghost and with humor, wonderment, and generosity toward life."—Kirkus Reviews

"Sweet and sarcastically funny."—YM

Publishers Weekly

"Soto pens a sort of Lovely Bones for the young adult set, filled with hope and elegance," said PW. "The author counterbalances difficult ideas with moments of genuine tenderness as well as a provocative lesson about the importance of savoring every moment." Ages 12-up. (Apr.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Children's Literature

Chuy's "life" after death experience comprises what he sees, hears, and feels for the first few days after he is stabbed three times and left to die in the restroom of the Club Estrella. He spends the next three days flitting from one scene to another—his parents house, the crime scene, hang out of the murderer, back to his home, over to his cousins, etc. He wants to tell them he is all right, but he is not really, having died before his life started. Chuy's mother wants his cousin to take revenge and Chuy watches his mother hand his cousin a knife. Chuy is not sure now he can stop it and eventually the cousin just gives the knife back. The murder remains a mystery—Chuy says, "Nice shoes" to the dude wearing yellow shoes and the next minute Chuy is dead. This was a reason to be killed? Perhaps it shows the senselessness of a brutal murder and a life wasted. Chuy meets another recently dead teenager who is remorseful for taking her own life, but the book does not dwell on the remorse. The pair now flit together to her house, the car where she committed suicide, back to her parents. Interesting concept, but hard to know the real substance of the book. 2003, Harcourt, Ages 14 to 18.
— Janet L. Rose

KLIATT

To quote the review of the hardcover in KLIATT, September 2003: Chuy was looking forward to his last year of high school and especially to meeting Rachel, the girl from the back of his English class, at tonight's dance. However, he never expected to be on the sharp end of a knife wielded by a guy in yellow shoes in the club bathroom. Like a Latino The Lovely Bones, Chuy tells the story of life after death, of what happens as he drifts through East Fresno watching the world go on after his stabbing. He moves with the wind, occasionally catching a ride, and he visits his friends and family and even finds good old yellow shoes again. All the while, he questions his new state of being, sees just how much he can "touch" in the land of the living, and wonders what will happen as he slowly fades away. He is soon joined by Crystal, a girl who has committed suicide over a couple of boyfriends, and together they take one last trip to see the people they will leave forever as they disappear limb by limb. As they close the chapters of their lives, they decide to face what is to come, the afterlife, together. Soto uses a light touch and his usual humor in visiting "the place beyond," and readers can't help but like Chuy and cheer him on as he finally gets the girl. KLIATT Codes: JS—Recommended for junior and senior high school students. 2003, Harcourt, 158p., Ages 12 to 18.
—Michele Winship

VOYA

In this story about a teenage boy's coming of age, Soto kills off his main character Chuy by page four. Yet his death is just the beginning as the rest of the book follows Chuy in the afterlife where he observes his friends, family, strangers, and even his murderer while in a ghostlike state. To pull off this horror conceit in a realistic teen novel, Soto creates a set of rules for the afterlife about how ghosts move, about how they can communicate with the living, and even about the span of afterlife. With his poetic training, Soto's evocative language creates a vivid vision of life after death filled with regret, guilt, and even humor. But it is not the big stuff that creates a page-turning read. It is the small scenes: Chuy worries that his mother will find his pack of never-to-be-used condoms; he offers a ghost-to-grave apology to his grandfather; and he observes the moment of silence held for him before a school basketball game. The message is that Chuy was just an average teen to whom no one paid much attention, the opposite of Crystal, a teen ghost girl with whom Chuy falls in love halfway through the book. Although the romance works, Crystal is not as fully developed as Chuy, and their back-story chance meeting years ago is one of the few misfires in the story. This great piece of young adult literature shows that realism is not necessary to explore the teen experience in an honest way. VOYA CODES: 4Q 4P J S (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses; Broad general YA appeal; Junior High, defined as grades 7 to 9; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12). 2003, Harcourt, 176p., $16. Ages 12 to 18.
—Patrick Jones

From The Critics

Chuy is a 17-year-old boy, born in Mexico and raised in Fresno, Calif.Although he is tragically murdered in the bathroom of a night club, his sudden death brings about many revelations about life, falling in love, and relationships. Average in looks and in life, Chuy narrates his short life and newly acquainted afterlife as he details his experiences, feelings, and what he learns as a ghost. The prequel to Soto's popular Buried Onions, which takes a look at events surrounding Chuy's death from the point of view of his cousin. Readers will enjoy Soto's The Afterlife, a creative and original journey of life and death as seen through the eyes of Chuy. 2003, Harcourt Children's Books, 168 pp. Ages young adult. Reviewer: Kim Morgan

School Library Journal

Gr 6 Up-Soto's twist on the emerging subgenre of narratives in the vein of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones (Little, Brown, 2002) offers a compelling character in the person of 17-year-old Chuy, murdered in the men's room of a dance hall the evening he plans to connect with the girl of his heart's desire. Unfortunately for both Chuy and readers, what happens after death is that the teen's once engaged and engaging spirit seems to dissipate along with his "ghost body." He floats around Fresno, CA, making seemingly random sightings of his murderer, local kids, and-only after a couple of days and at a time when his ghost body is beginning to dissolve limb by limb-other ghosts. He finds a new heartthrob in the form of a teen who has committed suicide and is befriended by the wise ghost of a transient whose life he tried to save. Grieving friends and family unknowingly are visited by Chuy, and he is startled to discover that his mother wants violent revenge for his death. This plethora of plot lines wafts across and past the landscape of a narrative as lacking in developed form as Chuy finds himself becoming. After a strong start, The Afterlife seems to become a series of brief images that drift off as though in a dream. Soto's simple and poetic language, leavened with Mexican Spanish with such care to context that the appended glossary is scarcely needed, is clear, but Chuy's ultimate destiny isn't.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Seventeen-year-old Chuy dies in the opening scene of this view from beyond; thereafter the story is told by his ghost, "invisible and touchable as light." Stabbed three times after commenting on a guy's yellow shoes in the restroom of Club Estrella, Chuy never gets to dance with his friend Rachel. Instead, "like a balloon in the wind," he floats around town observing the life he's left. He meets and falls in love with Crystal, who has committed suicide, helps a dead homeless man, flies in formation with some geese, and even takes in a Raiders game. Chuy realizes that he'll soon be heading for the afterlife but is grateful for the life he had. The ghosts offer no inside information on the big questions: Do we come back? Does heaven exist? How does the Almighty decide who lives and dies? Soto writes with a touch as light as Chuy's ghost and with humor, wonderment, and a generosity toward life. (Fiction. 12+)