The New World by Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz

The New World

Chris Adrian and Eli Horowitz

Immortality has never looked less inviting! On the speculative premise that cryogenic regeneration may be possible, the dual narrative revolves around the intriguing issue of whether marriage vows of commitment should endure into the 'afterlife', rather than ‘until death do us part'. As an exploration of love, betrayal, grief and hubris, it is at times absurdly surreal, yet profoundly affecting in the final chapters.

Extract
At the kitchen table, she set the DVD aside and studied the brochure’s cover, a photograph of the Polaris Pyramid, made entirely of glass .... When she’d glanced at the brochure cover earlier that day, the pyramid had registered as roughly the size of a house, but now she noticed that it utterly dwarfed the surrounding palm and oak trees. There weren’t any people in the picture, which seemed very strange. Shouldn’t they promote themselves like life insurance companies, who always had pictures of happy old couples, or smiling, orphanable children on their brochures, pictures of hostages, really, since they weren’t so different from the pictures the Mafia might send you of your own family to say, Look at how happy and fragile they are! Hope nothing TERRIBLE happens to them! Except of course Polaris was selling a lie in the form of literal life insurance, and the person who bought that insurance might potentially give hardly a fuck at all for the people they left behind.
Parallels
  • The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
  • What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson
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Explicit sexual content