Starred review from February 16, 2015
Short story writer Smith (Bang Crunch) delivers a splendidly confident debut novel, a fantasy of emotional healing in a unique afterlife. In 1979, 13-year-old Oliver “Boo” Dalrymple is an intelligent but socially awkward outcast, born with a defective heart. One day, he’s at his school locker, getting taunted by the school bullies as usual, and then he suddenly finds himself in the afterlife, presumably dead from his condition. This afterworld is an unusual one, however, populated entirely by other 13-year-olds who died in the U.S.A., and when his acquaintance Johnny joins him a few weeks later, Boo discovers that he and Johnny were actually shot by an unknown fellow classmate. Along with a number of new friends, Johnny and Boo set out on a quest to discover who shot them and investigate the rumors of portals that would allow them back to the world of the living. Smith smoothly develops his vision of an afterlife in which a theoretical god supplies random items from the living world, electronics run without power, and kids are left to their own devices. The story is never about providing solid answers, but readers who appreciate that sort of ambiguity will find that the emotional payoffs are both surprising and moving.