In this collection of interconnected stories by the Life After Life author Kate Atkinson, dogs and horses talk, ghosts watch TV and the world is in the grips of The Void, a daily event where everything goes dark for several minutes and anyone who is outdoors is extinguished.
In Gene-sis, humans are presided over by “sister of God” Kitty, an advertising executive tasked with playing God after her brother resigns from the job; while in Blithe Spirit, Mandy, a former PA to a politician, watches her own autopsy from the afterlife and learns how she died from a gunshot to the head. Mandy’s existence as a ghost brings its frustrations but it allows her to study human behaviour from a rare and unearthly vantage point. Among the book’s recurring characters is Franklin, a producer on a popular soap opera who once dreamed of writing his “Great Novel” and who has been unlucky in life until a talking racehorse gives him a winning tip.
