It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over

By: Anne de Marcken

Narrated by: Jessica Preddy

Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, this incredible life-after-death novel asks us to consider how much of our memory, of our bodies, of the world as we know it—how much of what we love can we lose before we are lost? And then what happens?

The heroine of the spare and haunting It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, she notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable and nearly unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known—where she loved and was loved.

Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another.

©2024 Anne de Marcken (P)2024 Master Recording (P) Bolinda Publishing

Finally an original book

Yes it’s confusing at times, yes it’s zany, but overall I really really liked it.

The author decided to throw out the rulebook and do something original - finally! I read a lot of fiction, and so many books fall in to specific categories and patterns. Tropes, storylines, characters that repeat..

This book stands on its own. I read it twice in a row, since it’s so short. And since I like to know as little as possible about a book before reading it, I read it a second time since then at least understood wtf was going on.

Well done. But also wtf was the crow talking about?

Probably Deep, Not for Me

I'm sure this book has a lot of deep meaning to it, but I just didn't enjoy experiencing this novel. The plot isn't quite linear, and the experimental nature of this novel reminds me of something I'd read and analyze for weeks in a literature class.

my biggest qualm with this book is that I feel like it's probably a better read versus listen. I can definitely see there's value in this kind of literature but I also wish I didn't spend my credit on this one, haha! All in all, if you don't mind a strange/scattered/perhaps non-existent plot and you're into books with tons of metaphor, interesting imagery, and crows, this book is for you!

one good thing- it reminds me of 'I Who Have Never Known Men' which is a beautiful novel. So, if you liked that, you might like this one!

The manner of which this book was written

I loved this book! It’s abstract take on what the end of the world would be like is amazing! My favorite quotes is “some of it, is real”