A Short Stay in Hell

By: Steven L. Peck

Narrated by: Sergei Burbank

An ordinary family man, geologist, and Mormon, Soren Johansson has always believed he'll be reunited with his loved ones after death in an eternal hereafter. Then, he dies. Soren wakes to find himself cast by a God he has never heard of into a Hell whose dimensions he can barely grasp: a vast library he can only escape from by finding the book that contains the story of his life.

In this haunting existential novella, author, philosopher, and ecologist Steven L. Peck explores a subversive vision of eternity, taking the reader on a journey through the afterlife of a world where everything everyone believed in turns out to be wrong.

©2012 Strange Violin Editions (P)2012 Strange Violin Editions

Beautifully unsettling

This short, smart existential novella is a gem. After the protagonist, Soren Johansson, a devout Mormon, dies of cancer, he finds himself in a room with four other people. There, an officious demon cheerfully informs everyone that they’ve all failed to follow the one true religion (which I won’t spoil, but suffice to say, it’s not one of the obvious candidates) and consigns them all to a variety of hells.

For the protagonist, hell is a bigger-than-the-known-universe library containing every possible book (including those whose contents are just random characters, i.e. the vast majority). And the only way out, according to a posted notice, is to find the book containing one’s own life story. Hell does operate according to a few rules, which can’t be broken. There are food dispensers, which give out any meal requested. Non-carried objects return to their place at the end of each day. People who die are returned to life.

At first, Soren does what most people would do: he explores, forms relationships, tests the rules, and discusses solutions to the shared predicament. But days, then months, then years pass. The denizens of the library form societies. Soren experiences wandering and loneliness. He falls in love. Then violent religious mania hits people, and hell really does become hell. So, he escapes to deeper levels, in search of both his lost lover and answers.

I won’t give away what happens from there, but Peck does eventually make it clear that there’s no easy way out. The author’s wry sense of humor makes the haunting philosophical questions go down easy, but that won’t stop them from swirling uncomfortably in your mind later. As I see it, this is a book about what faith really means. What happens if God utterly defies all our expectations? Would we still believe? Could we let go of our belief? And I don’t think Peck is letting non-believers off the hook, either -- if we contemplate the hell of a purposeless reality, might it be better to have some ray of hope in a greater meaning, however slender?

Beautifully unsettling questions. I’m glad I spotted this one in an audible sale.

An extreeeeeeeeeeeeeeemely ironic title

Short listen and thought provoking. Could be depressing to some listeners.
Narrated well and a clever alternative take on the concept of hell.

One of my favorites

One of my favorite books for the simplicity in making a complicated subject so easy and showing the reader a different way to look at religion.

Good short story

Sometimes the audio changes voices (less than five throughout the book), but overall it's a good experience and the idea is interesting.

A Most Significant Book

What would happen if you found yourself in a Hell that had a beginning, and an end, but has rules you can not fathom. Hope will... persevere.

The most incredible story of hell I've heard of!

This book will stick with me for the rest of my life. The book left me gasping with genuine, too my bones terror. I'm so glad I read it, and I'm going to read it again and again.

Interesting

The philosophy behind the book is intriguing. My friends told me about this book and I had to read it. Whoever the narrator is, isn’t a trained voice actor and it sounds like a normal dad who just picked up a book and is reading to his kids at night…so that bugged me because the acting could’ve been a lot better. I also thought the book was going to end differently, however, I know I won’t stop thinking of this story and I’m glad there was an audio version so I could listen while cleaning my house.

Infinity gets a perspective

The fact that this was written by someone open minded enough to consider their own religion could be wrong makes it possible to examine if my own beliefs COULD BE wrong as well.
The mind boggling perspective of eternity and WHAT THAT ACTUALLY MEANS to us, as we live such fractions of time in our know history, really was appalling.... pleasantly though!

Infinity Explored

As an atheist, something that always unsettled me about religion was the offer to live forever. Surely a person would grow bored after 100,000 years? A million? A billion? And what of those condemned to hell? Did anyone who committed finite crimes really deserve to be tortured for that long.

A Short Stay in Hell, a beautiful piece by Mormon Steven L. Peck, grapples with these questions with extreme earnestness which honestly thaws the heart of skeptic like me who usually has little time for theological musings. A devout Mormon is condemned to a Zoroastarian purgatory, tasked with the deceptively simple task of finding the story of his life in an infinite library.

The dread of contemplating what an eternity for a consciousness would be like is both horrifying and moving. I would recommend this to any fan of existential horror, and also to anyone who wants to seriously, critically examine their religious faith or non-faith. Sergei Burbank's measured, occasionally quavering everyman voice is the perfect narrator for this book.

exceptional.

Good luck wrapping your head around this one. if you try, you're sure to be in a deep dark place if successful.