Synopses & Reviews
The Afterword is the afterword to a best-selling novel that doesnt exist. It is a stunning, deliriously original work of fiction about the nature of faith in the modern world.
That book is The Deity Next Door, a novel that spent 102 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List. In this after-word to this nonexistent novel, the author of The Deity Next Door sets out to address all the questions and confrontations he has fielded about the story over the past two years. As he reveals the secret life of various episodes from the novel, describes passages cut from the book, discusses fine points of theology, and tosses in assorted apocrypha and asides, the life and times of the deity next door come alive. The young man who grew up with a Madonna of a different sort, who loves his wife, his son, and the Mets, struggles to understand, first, the nature of his twentieth-century divinity and, second, what to do with this gift. As that story unfolds, we learn of the preoccupations and passions that inspired The Deity Next Door and may well have served Mike Bryan as motivation for writing The After-word.
Brimming with idea and event, strangeness and humor, this brief novel delivers both an implied confessional and a slantwise, deliriously enlightening investigation into the nature of fiction and faith.
Review
"Wonderfull inventive, clever, funny, intellectually provocative, and irreverent in the best sence of the word." Alan Lightman
Review
"The lively, concise book is cleverly executed and poses some provocative questions. Yet some readers may be put off by the self-important tone." Publishers Weekly
Review
"Pretty dreadful, but it could have been worse: Bryan might actually have written The Deity Next Door as well." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Due to Deity's absence as a thing of glue and ink...The Afterword's audience must imagine that earlier book....The specific flavor will vary from reader to reader, as will opinion of its success or failure. Thus Bryan's fictional fiction neatly suits his spiritual concerns, reflecting the all too human grasping for sense in the face of a divinity who is less than forthcoming who is, perhaps, not." Village Voice
Synopsis
An author pens a fake book and spends years defending its existence. Brimming with ideas and events, strangeness and humor, this brief novel delivers both an implied confessional and a slantwise, deliriously enlightening investigation into the nature of fiction and faith.
Synopsis
The Afterword is the afterword to a best-selling novel that doesn’t exist. It is a stunning, deliriously original work of fiction about the nature of faith in the modern world.