In the afterlife you may find that God is the size of a microbe and unaware of your existence. Or you may find the afterlife contains only those people whom you remember. In some afterlives you are split into all your different ages, in some you are recreated based on your credit card records, and in others you are forced to live with annoying versions of yourself that represent what you could have been.
In these wonderfully imagined tales – at once funny, wistful and unsettling – Eagleman kicks over the chessboard of traditional notions and offers us a dazzling lens through which to see ourselves here and now. His stories are rooted in science and romance and awe at our mysterious existence: a mixture of hope, love and death that cuts through human nature at innovative angles.
This stunningly original book is little more than 100 pages long. You can get through it in an hour, but you'd be mad to hurry, and you will certainly want to return to it many times . . . Sum has the unaccountable, jaw-dropping quality of genius. It seems exquisitely adapted to fill the contemporary longing for a kind of secular holy book.
A clever book.
I suppose there could be people who dislike Canongate's latest find . . . those, dare one say it, without poetry in their souls. For the rest - the millions who even in a post-religious, secular society find themselves at unexpected moments wondering who or what God is, if he's not a little old man sitting on a cloud.
Mary Crockett, Scotsman40 intriguing tales describing different heavenly scenarios . . . and all formidably imagined . . . Readers may discover much to appreciate - not least the lives they are living now, still so much better than some nightmares in these pages. ... quirky, occasionally unsettling ... never short of new new ideas, all of them rolled out with style.
Nicholas Tucker, IndependentClever, memorable stuff.
Lottie Moggach, The London PaperThis is as much an object of desire as an actual book . . . elegant, surreal and philosophically questioning, each story from neuroscientist Eagleman offers an inventive, thought-provoking blend of science and romance . . . sly wit, ingenuity and oddly acute insight into the vagaries of the human condition.
Tina Jackson, MetroBrilliantly realised, blazingly original, Sum isn't so much about the next life as this one. Eagleman's stories - parables? - a chilly reminder of our foibles and delusions.
Colin Waters, Sunday HeraldSUM is an imaginative and provocative book that gives new perspectives on how to view ourselves and our place in the world.
Alan Lightman, author of EINSTSUM is terrific. It's such a good idea that I was grinding my teeth all the way through wishing I'd thought of it first. The inventiveness, the clarity and wit of the prose, the calm air of moral understanding that pervades the whole thing, add up to something completely original. I hope Sum will be the great big hit it deserves to be.
Philip PullmanWitty, bright, sharp and unexpected . . . as surprising a book as I've read for years.
Every story is a new Heaven.
Brian Eno
