Afterworlds, by Scott Westerfeld

Afterworlds, by Scott Westerfeld is a strange amalgam of a book.  It’s half a story of a young writer come to New York to write on the strength of her first YA novel and half the story she wrote, featuring a young girl who escapes terrorist attacks at her local airport by pretending to be dead…a little too convincingly.  She finds herself in a sort of between life and death world, from which she is (eventually) able to come and go as she pleases.

The book seesaws between the mundane business of publishing (I am sure no first-time writer has it as easy as she does) and the horror-suspense of the Afterworld in a way that is surprisingly well balanced; each chapter moves the story along a little ways, sometimes in a connected way, mostly not. This is not as jarring a transition as you might imagine: Westerfeld is an excellent writer, and the character of each of the two protagonists is well-developed enough that you hardly notice how slow the book really is.

That was intended as praise.  I like a book I can linger over.

The link above goes to amazon; I got my copy at the local library.

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