Michael Poore's Reincarnation Blues

 My son, on the strength of the first couple of paragraphs, picked up this book after a trip to the bookstore with friends a few years ago. I had been reading haltingly this year and thought something comedic might do me some good.  I haven’t read any of Michael Poore’s other books, and I was completely unfamiliar with him or his work before reading Reincarnation Blues.

 Poore is an excellent writer, with a knack for poetic language that makes his prose sparkle.  Here’s a brief example, in which he describes a roulette wheel: “A ball pops around like an electrocuted cat and eventually comes to rest somewhere” (108).  The electrocuted cat is surprising and funny and evocative.  A good deal of the humor of the book comes from Poore’s clever and insightful wielding of language, and it is truly a joy and a pleasure to read.

 

In the world of the narrative, we all live life after life, learning as we go, hopefully, until we achieve a moment of perfection that allows us to transcend into the oversoul and become one with the universe.  In between each life lived, there is a kind of staging world, in which you can collect yourself, reflect upon things, get coaching from two beings who are neither gods nor mortals, but agents of the universe.  Our protagonist is a man named Milo.  He’s not always a man, and he’s not always named Milo, but for the bulk of the narrative, he’s a man named Milo.  His two universal guides appear to him as older women named Mama and Nan.  In that in-between world with Mama and Nan, Milo has a friend and lover names Suzie, who is Death.  Her name as given by the universe is not Suzie, but that’s the name she gave herself to be pronounceable by Milo.  And she is not THE Death but merely one of many Deaths who help people transition from their living life to the in-between world.  Suzie, like Mama and Nan, is neither god nor mortal, another agent of the universe.  The crux of our story is this: Milo has lived 9,990-some lives when he learns that you only get 10,000 lives to achieve perfection and join the universal oversoul.  If you fail within that time period, you instead get option B, which is to become nothingness, to cease to be entirely.  Can he do it? Should he do it? What does perfection look like? Does he lose Suzie if he joins the oversoul?  Is the nothingness forever?  Read the book to find out.

 

It's an enjoyable read, even beyond Poore’s talented use of words and phrases. It’s fun to skip through whole arcs of lives.  Poore does something very neat with this world he created. Lives are of course not lived chronologically through the earth’s timeline as well know it.  You can live in 2,000 BC or 3,400 AD or 1848 or 1972 as you wish.  By shooting us into the future, Poore brings science fiction into a book that does not appear at first glance to be science fiction. And while the world of the past closely mirrors the real world as we readers will know it, the future takes some bold leaps that are funny and poignant. Best of all, there is a weaving between the lives in the futures that creates a stable timeline, a single invented world.  The lives lived are not part of alternate worlds of possibility, but one single timeline.  In doing so, Poore creates a genuinely new and unique world that’s fun to follow and play in. It’s a clever trick, expertly done.

 

Generally, I found the book to be a quick read, but there were parts that were very difficult to wade though. Poore does not shy away from the ugly parts of human nature and human history, and for that I applaud him. For the most part, the more sci-fi-y parts of the novel still feel grounded in a real understanding of humans and relationships. For me, however, the chapter set in a prison ship adrift in space was not just ugly, but unbelievable. There was no human compassion or sense of community among people outcast by society and left to die. I realize that he did this for a number of reasons, but none of those reasons make up for how unbelievable it is.  Part of his reason is that these are murderers and irredeemable people jettisoned from society.  Part of his reason is that Milo’s arc in that part of the story needs to raise him from the lowest of the low to what might be the highest of the highs. Part of his reason is that we are going to see another outcast society on the planet of Jupiter later in the novel, and you don’t want for them to be too similar; there needs to be considerable contrast between the two. In the end, though, I think it plays into the idea that people in prison are mean, horrible people, murderers and rapists and the worst of all of us. We of course know that societies formed within prisons, while there may be gangs and plays for power as there are anywhere else in society, are mutually supportive, containing all the positive aspects of society that we see anywhere else.  When Milo walks naked and battered into a room of people hanging out, playing a card game, every single person in the room has the first impulse to rape the 16-year-old boy and gleefully acts upon that impulse, en masse.  It’s not just upsetting, but ridiculous, and not in an amusing way.

 

There are other minor decisions that didn’t sit well with me, but nothing that ruined the book or the reading experience.  A story is the teller’s statement about the world and humanity and life, and I’m not surprised that Poore and I have different visions. None of those differences between us, in short, is the fault of the writer.

 

It’s a solid book, focused and funny, well-constructed and clever. If it sounds at all like your jam, I highly recommend it.