Dr Jenni Fagan’s latest novel The Delusions is a fiercely tender vision of the administrative world of the dead. The narrator, Edi, is a team member responsible for processing queues of the newly departed. Following protocol, all souls must honestly complete a questionnaire about their life, evacuating any wriggling ‘delusion’ from their beings. This afterlife does not privilege billionaires, or corrupt politicians. Those responsible for genocide face a special hell for their crimes.
Foulmouthed and infinitely lovable, Edi acts as an avatar for the dispossessed, fighting to survive. A working-class, queer Scottish woman reflecting on a lifetime of rage, she skewers the absurdity of society’s bureaucracies – unremitting even in death.
After an incident at work, Edi is undergoing disciplinary proceedings. She has not seen her son since she died 47 years ago. Her untimely death by a surgeon’s hands ended her contented existence, when she’d finally found fulfilment as a mother and a tattoo artist.
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Though HR prohibits it, Edi is desperate to glimpse her child again on the terminus floor. During long shifts with her darling work besties, Eustace and Batshiva (who were born in different eras), Edi encounters a gamut of people, from gobshites and narcissists to kindred spirits.
Huffing stardust for relief, and floating across the constellations, Edi considers the symphony of souls that fill the cosmos – all the resonances that unite us, despite systems that seek to divide us. But extinction for humanity looms on the horizon.
