Reincarnation Blues

A Novel

Michael Poore

- 4.5 • 140 Ratings

- $11.99

- $11.99

A wildly imaginative novel about a man who is reincarnated over ten thousand lifetimes to be with his one true love: Death herself.

“Tales of gods and men akin to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman as penned by a kindred spirit of Douglas Adams.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

First we live. Then we die. And then . . . we get another try?

Ten thousand tries, to be exact. Ten thousand lives to “get it right.” Answer all the Big Questions. Achieve Wisdom. And Become One with Everything.

Milo has had 9,995 chances so far and has just five more lives to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn’t make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her.

More than just Milo’s lover throughout his countless layovers in the Afterlife, Suzie is literally his reason for living—as he dives into one new existence after another, praying for the day he’ll never have to leave her side again.

But Reincarnation Blues is more than a great love story: Every journey from cradle to grave offers Milo more pieces of the great cosmic puzzle—if only he can piece them together in time to finally understand what it means to be part of something bigger than infinity. As darkly enchanting as the works of Neil Gaiman and as wisely hilarious as Kurt Vonnegut’s, Michael Poore’s Reincarnation Blues is the story of everything that makes life profound, beautiful, absurd, and heartbreaking.

Because it’s more than Milo and Suzie’s story. It’s your story, too.

Praise for Reincarnation Blues

“The most fun you’ll have reading about a man who has been killed by both catapult and car accident.”—NPR

“This book made me laugh out loud. And then a page later, it made me sob. Reminiscent of Tom Robbins and Christopher Moore, Poore finds humor in the dark absurdities of life.”—Chicago Review of Books

“Charming . . . surprisingly light and uplifting . . . It reads like a writer having fun.”—New York Journal of Books

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUL 3, 2017

Poore (Up Jumps the Devil) addresses humans' relationship to the universe through a clever, personal story filled with gentle humor, wry sweetness, and perhaps even some wisdom. In Poore's setup, which owes a bit to Buddhist thought but isn't dogmatic, a person may be reincarnated up to 10,000 times in the pursuit of perfection. The narrative follows Milo, who is approaching the 10,000-reincarnation limit. His lives (and deaths) range across time and space: a prehistoric village, the traveling party of the Buddha, mundane 20th-century coupledom, radical spacefaring in a future dystopia. Between lives, the afterlife offers Milo rest, feedback from cosmic entities that manifest as cranky old women, and housing that corresponds in quality to the results of the lifetime just completed. It also lets him reconnect with his socially awkward lover, Death, whom he calls Suzie. Poore's past and future settings are sketched with only as much detail as is needed to anchor the emotional journey of his protagonist, an empathetic, bumbling everyman whose mental voice is consistently, contemporarily American. Poole aims to amuse more than to philosophize, but his ideas about human nature and the randomness of life make this more than a time-jumping farce.

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