Title: A Short Stay in Hell
Author: Steven L. Peck
Publisher: Strange Violin 2011
Genre: Speculative Fiction
Pages: 104
Rating: 3/5 stars
Reading Challenges: Spooky Season
Where I Got It: Library
An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he’ll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life.
Our book club selection for October. I am very unsure what I feel about this novella. I went into the story completely blind (as I think you should as a reader), but at the end, I wasn’t sure that I actually enjoyed the story. We get about a hundred pages of existential rambling. Overall, I enjoyed the philosophical thought-experiment. But that’s basically all this is. We cannot read this as an actual story with characters and an arc. We get just a snippet of some rambling thoughts. I would have liked to se more from the main character and more from his journey. This story feels incomplete.
Next up on the TBR pile:
