We at BooksfromScotland are very much looking forward to Jenni Fagan’s new novel, The Delusions. We are introduced to Edi, working in administration in the afterlife where she processes the newly dead. And when it looks like there is going to be a mass extinction event on earth, it looks like it’s going to get chaotic in Arrivals. We asked Jenni Fagan to share her thoughts on why the afterlife continues to compel.

The Delusions
By Jenni Fagan
Published by Hutchinson Heinemann

I have always been fascinated by what we can’t see, what we don’t know, even as a child the idea that this world was the only one, never made sense to me. What happens after death is one of the great mysteries of life and I never found an explanation in any religion that made sense as to what that might hold.

The soul is eternal is something that did make sense, the soul doesn’t exist solely within the confines of the body, once the finite part of our life on earth is done, the soul would then separate and go on. I have had a few near death experiences in life that supported this feeling for me, I can’t explain it in depth (or won’t) but it is what I believe.

We are linked to so many more ancestors than we could imagine. Their lives on earth somehow eventually brought us into the world. So all those stories behind us, all those periods of history, and all of those folks who have already passed are not a separate thing. When I was researching for The Delusions I thought about that a lot. How the human race in its totality is so much more closely aligned than we are divided, it is the structures of society that teach otherwise and it undermines humanity full stop I think.

When you lose people you love your relationship with the afterlife becomes more distinct. I don’t feel like the afterlife is so far from this one. In a city like Edinburgh which is so ancient you can feel the dead and the living cross by each other all the time, in our street names, our buildings, our traditions, in our homes.

As a writer you dip in and out of the eternal every time you write. Those words may disappear one day but so will the sea eventually. It doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, a living thing, an extraordinary force of nature! Our moon won’t always shine but other moons will. If I lived a billion lives I’d still favour the moon I currently see in the sky each night. When you meet a newborn or carry life, you can feel a link to something so much more than us. I like the idea that the soul truly is the only thing a human owns and that every act affects it, that when we pass that’s the only thing we are taking with us and it will be luminous or not dependent on how we lived our lives, I don’t think anyone is granted a consciousness to not have to one day face who and exactly what they are, it certainly doesn’t always happen in this lifetime and far too many get away with spending their life in delusion whilst causing great harm to others. I wanted to create a world where the soul holds the DNA of a human life and one day that will have to be evaluated for everyone.

The Delusions by Jenni Fagan is published by Hutchinson Heinemann, priced £18.99.