Life After Death and Other Stories

By Susan Compo

Book Overview

A deep dive into the subcultures of Los Angeles and London in the 1980s as glam turned to punk and goth.

Susan Compo captures the lives of aspiring musicians, scenesters, and obsessive fans--lives in which reality is a constant threat to cherished illusions, and death, while never far away, is sometimes not the end of the story.

Cathi Unsworth calls Life After Death "a dazzling time capsule that, once re-opened, brings back in vivid and lurid detail a counter-cultural moment that spanned cities and continents, uniting lost souls under layers of black hair dye, bleach, mascara, torn fishnets and smeared lipstick at the altar of doomed punk icons and screen goddesses . . . This cast of outsider poets, prophets, and punkers do not seem like figments of Susan Compo's vivid imagination but very real manifestations of the rebel spirits who burned Punk's trail from London to LA in the years between Glam and Goth."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 195383504X
• ISBN13: 9781953835048
• Release Date: October 2020
• Publisher: Visible Spectrum
• Length: 242 Pages
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

One of My Favorite Works of Fiction!

I first read this fine work of fiction by Susan Compo as a teen, and recently returned and re-read twice! Totally captivating and completely captures an era. Susan is totally right on in her cultural references and creates a dazzling set of characters you will never forget. A must!

Personas Like Fashions

This was a fun and touching book to read. The characters in Susan Compo's "Life After Death" are sharply drawn with sympathy no matter how quirky or self-destrutively impulsive they might be. Many of the people don't want to be who they are and they try on new personas as they would try on new fashions until one works for them. They are then liberated and confined by their new persona, these romantics who can't seem to love wholly. But Compo always gives her characters their due, letting the reader judge for themselves.