Sunday 25 August 2019

Divine Comedy: "Milton in Purgatory" by Edward Vass



Divine Comedy


A review of "Milton in Purgatory" by Edward Vass

A Fairlight Modern novella


"I'm not mad - just dead..."

What does Life have in store for us after Death?  Or, let me rephrase that… What does Death have in store for us after Life?

It is a question which the world’s greatest religions have grappled with, which the earliest myths and foremost philosophers have pondered upon, and which has inspired great art, music and literature. It is also an enigma which is unexpectedly thrust upon twenty-six year old Milton Pitt, hit by a car on his way to the work. 

Milton leads quite a boring life, alternating between days at the office and boozy nights out.  He has no important relationships and no short-term goals (nor long-term ones, for that matter) apart from a vague, unrequited appetite for travel inspired by a picture book about Cuba, a childhood gift from an émigré uncle.  This wanderlust will soon be rewarded with the strangest trip ever, as Milton is unexpectedly catapulted into the Afterlife. 

Edward Vass’s novella is an inventive, hilarious romp which turns many tropes about Heaven, Purgatory and Hell on their head.  Milton makes for an entertaining narrator as he navigates the cartoonish stations of the world beyond.   There’s a degree of irreverence and no doubt a couple of conservative eyebrows will be raised at the portrayal of Jesus as one Barry Davis, a bossy official of the Innovation of Religion Department.  Yet the humour is so good-natured, elicits laughter so naturally and is ultimately so warm-hearted that I cannot imagine anyone seriously taking offence.

At the same time, Milton in Purgatory should not be dismissed as “mere” comic entertainment. The best comedy tends to have a moralistic element.  And Vass’s novella is as much about the world we live in as it is about the crazy otherworldly kingdom it portrays. Throughout there are witty, well-aimed barbs which satirize the (un)comfortably numb existence cultivated by contemporary society.         

This is another winner in the latest clutch of Fairlight Moderns. The novella is often viewed as the “Cinderella” sister between the short story and the novel.  This series is doing much to right that wrong.


Paperback
Expected publication: September 26th 2019 by Fairlight Books

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