Here Goes Nothing

By: Steve Toltz

Narrated by: Ben Chapple

Length: 10 hrs

Publisher's summary

A wildly inventive, savagely funny, and topical novel about love, mortality, and the afterlife, by the Booker-shortlisted author of A Fraction of the Whole.

Angus is a reformed ne’er-do-well looking forward to the birth of his first child when he’s murdered by a man who is in love with his pregnant wife Gracie. Having never believed in God, heaven or hell, Angus finds himself in the afterlife—a place that provides more questions than answers. As a worldwide pandemic finally reaches the shores of Australia, the afterlife starts to get very crowded and Angus finds a way to reconnect with his wife Gracie and maybe even seek revenge on his murderer …

Here Goes Nothing is a novel of exhilarating originality and scope about birth, death, and everything in between and after by “a writer of prodigious talent”—Peter Carey, that contains a vision of the afterlife that rivals Dante’s Divine Comedy and George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, and the Emmy-nominated The Good Place.

©2022 Steve Toltz (P)2022 Blackstone Publishing

"The Good Place," only maybe not quite so Good

Another book made better by a really gifted narrator. (Full props to Ben Chapple!) Some hilarious parts, some really really dark humor. Toltz will cite Nietzsche in one breath and "Willy Wonka" next, with hauntings, plagues, and climate change in-between. Dark stuff, and still I laughed, mostly, because the book does make you think. Are we, as one character proposes, the equivalent of Prometheus' liver -- eaten by an eagle reach night for the singular purpose of regrowing to be eaten again? Would God be unable to appear to us in human form because what shape/skin color/gender/etc., H/She chose would only lead to angry divisions among the living? What happens after we die? What if it's no different from what we left beyond, only maybe a little grayer? How do we make sense of our mortality? Yep, all here. It definitely won't be to everyone's taste, but if you're of a philosophical frame of mind (is that phrasing patently redundant?), are tolerant of bleak situations made funny by a smart, playful author and an affable narrator perfectly made for the role, and enjoy finding yourself drawn into pondering really big questions, you may well enjoy this as much as I did.

some good stuff

some really surprising character subtlety. as always, some fabulous one-liners. a few laugh out louds.

A giant nothing burger.

Great performance from the reader. The rest is like listening to that one grandparent who's just lived way too long and done nothing exciting in their life; "Did I ever tell you about that time I made some toast and the burned part looked like a cross?" Yes, grandma!
Anyway, just read an encyclopedia or the backs of cereal boxes instead.

Wow so disappointing

I was really hyped on Toltz after Quicksand, this is like an anemic approximation of everything that made it so compelling. Giving up about halfway thru.

an eye roll the entire time

this book is just a thesaurus from a second year philosophy student. the story is so boring, the characters talk in a way that no one talks like. do not suggest, will be returning and getting another book.