The afterlife, as depicted in Steve Toltz’s latest novel Here Goes Nothing, turns out to be somewhat disappointing. There are no heavenly rewards or seething lakes of fire. If there are any reunions with lost family and loved ones, then they occur by happenstance and can be rather awkward. The suffering – of which there is still plenty – does not result from divine or cosmic justice and lacks any kind of satisfying irony. Life after death, it turns out, is just another life.
