The Afterlives - Softcover

Fascinating...His work has a quirky sensibility that recalls Lorrie Moore or George Saunders, an ability to bring the unquestionably weird into the path of daily life without every seeming forced...Pierce's confident story-telling and fine characterisation mean that we always feel in safe hands...The Afterlives - like Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black, or Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife - will raise the hairs on the back of your neck and remind you that another world may be just a heartbeat away (Erica Wagner, Financial Times)

There are moments in Thomas Pierce's debut The Afterlives that recall the English author Kate Atkinson's award-winning novel Life After Life....It is a hugely inventive and enjoyable journey into the unknown. What makes the novel so successful is a believable near-future whose advances seem only a few steps away from where we are today...Captivating (The Irish Times)

Pierce mines the mysterious rift between fantasy and reality with the intricate skill of an archaeologist and the sheer wonder of an imaginative child (Elle)

Set in America in the near future . . . this funny modern-day ghost story calls to mind Henry James's work . . . [A] highly entertaining read (The Lady)

This dazzlingly original novel tackles a timeless question - what happens after we die? A hilarious and resplendent story about metaphysics, technology, love, and of course, the afterlife (Chicago Review of Books)

Thomas Pierce's touching, thought-provoking debut novel (USA Today)

Thomas Pierce's enchanting debut novel, The Afterlives...[is] richly imaginative, quirky.... Pierce's pacing is excellent, and the reader never feels overwhelmed by the increasingly bizarre events in the novel...Pierce also has a gift for memorable and realistic characters... A deeply generous, compassionate book that asks its readers to open their hearts and treat one another with understanding, even as the world grows more complicated, and more unknowable, every day (NPR.org)

Thomas Pierce uses a love story to ask the big questions in his debut novel...Through Jim and Annie's experience living in a small, gentrifying town during a moment of technological change, Pierce approaches more anxious topics both far out and everyday: what if we could capture the essence of a dead person in a hologram? What happens when technology can hurt as well as aid? Is it possible to be a good step-parent? Did I marry the right person? The book's pull comes from the mash-up of all the existential concerns a person might face (Vanity Fair)

A bracingly intelligent, beautifully rendered meditation on ghosts, technology, marriage, and the afterlife. This is a remarkable novel (Emily St. John Mandel)

Weave[s] science into stories about faith, family, and mysteries of existence. In both, death is still an inescapable fact of life...The Afterlives is as much a dialogue and an attempt at reconciliation between faith and science as it is a contemplation of the opportunities of second chances. (Salon.com)