October book review: The Afterlife Road

I'm back with another Inkberry Books review and I'm very excited to share my thoughts. Author Brice Austin takes readers on seven relatively short journeys with various characters in The Afterlife Road. These are stories that, at first glance, may seem mundane--a guy who doesn't want anything to do with the family business, another mourning for a beloved family pet, or a girl who almost drowns while taking a pit stop during a bicycle race.

Austin is a talented author: he is descriptive and knows how to balance that with dialogue. Each of the stories are engaging, and even if some are a little heavier on the exposition, the dialogue and/or look into characters' psyches help the reader stay curious about the various plots.

But, what I like most about this collection is that the characters are very relatable and the stories make you think. When reading the titular piece, "The Afterlife Road," the narrator reflects on how awkward he was in high school. You can practically feel his despair at having to do chin-ups in gym class.

Or in "Love is like the Speed of Light," many readers can likely empathize with the narrator as he talks about seeing his mom grow weaker with time. Finally, "The F.O.C." is an excellent example of how it feels to want, so desperately, to help someone you love, while wondering if you're any help to them at all.

Austin puts you in the characters' shoes, and it's so engaging because you want to know what will happen next. Then, there's this other feeling that's difficult to describe. While reading the collection, it reminded me of watching "The Twilight Zone." Maybe that's because instead of focusing on these big, monumental journeys, the stories focus on "characters' day-to-day existences." But at the same time, while the literal events in the stories are fairly pedestrian, the characters experience growth and develop understanding in ways that seem very personal.

It's almost voyeuristic. We all become like the character Toadette in "The Afterlife Road," watching the other characters struggle with joy and pain, confusion and clarity. This collection is deeply vulnerable, but not in the same way as other pieces, where you may infer the author's state of mind while writing. Instead, it's almost as though Austin tapped into people's fears--being replaced is one such fear that appears throughout the collection--prompting readers to then look beyond the characters and at themselves.

The book is unique for this reason alone. It's engaging and fascinating, because of how Austin has taken the quotidian existence many of us face and forces us to look at it from a new perspective. I highly recommend this book. I think that its format of being a collection of short stories adds to its value, especially for those who want to get back into reading.

Happy Reading!