Gary Soto Gary Soto, born in 1952 and raised in Fresno California, is the author of ten poetry collections for adults, most notably New and Selected Poems, a 1995 finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Award and the National Book Award. His poems have appeared in many literary magazines, including The Nation, Plouqhshares, The Iowa Review, Ontario Review and most frequently Poetry, which has honored him with the Bess Hokin Prize and the Levinson Award and by featuring him in Poets in Person. He is one of the youngest poets to appear in The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry. He lives in Berkeley, CA. Gary Soto Website ISFDB Bibliography

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Gary Soto's new young adult novel, The Afterlife, is similar to Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones but for adolescent boys and somewhat better written. Gary Soto is well known in the poetry world for his New and Selected Poems becoming a finalist for the National Book Award. Poetry fans will recognize that his clear and simple style has carried over into his young adult novel -- a detail others might overlook as the default style of young adult novels. But this distinction will be elaborated upon later.

Chuy is an average kid -- average-looking and average at athletics -- from the poorer district of L.A. He plays basketball but only plays when their team is way ahead or way behind. We meet him in the restroom of Club Estrella, spiffing up for his date. Chuy tells a stranger in yellow shoes that Chuy likes the shoes. The guy doesn't much care for the remark. So he stabs Chuy, and Chuy dies.

Chuy is now a ghost slowly disappearing and is tossed by the wind. The latter becomes an important issue structurally, though not at first. Chuy is learning what has happened to him and who he now is and what he can now do as a ghost. This is what distinguishes Soto's novel from that of Sebold's. Chuy is curious about the afterlife and explores it like an intrepid explorer. Sebold's narrator largely does nothing of the sort. Most of her time is spent watching what's happening in the real world that we wonder how necessary the supernatural element is to the story. One might extrapolate that this is what all science fiction does and elucidate a good reason why fantasy can be labeled as science fiction since humans have curiosity and are willing to investigate what's happening in the world. It is a scientific curiosity that asks questions: where am I, who are these people, how do these things work. And so Soto the respected poet has now become a genre writer. Oh, the ignominy!

Moreover, Soto employs his skill as a poet to render not only powerful prose but also simple prose that might surprise a few fans of style that literary has multiple styles. In fact, certain cadre of the literary ilk might scoff the style of, say, the New Weird as too opulent, too uncommon man, too elitist (of course, by scoffing and saying their way is the only way, the literary ilk become elitist too. So more power to the New Weird! Everyone finds their own path). Here, Soto captures a moment so beautifully simple:

"[Oakland Raiders fans outside the stadium] stomped their shoes and boots when they dipped a tortilla chip in salsa and couldn't handle the fiery taste. I couldn't catch the footballs that were tossed around the parking lot, and the dudes playing couldn't catch them, either."

Trent Walters' work has appeared or will appear in The Distillery, Fantastical Visions, Full Unit Hookup, Futures, Glyph, Harpweaver, Nebo, The Pittsburgh Quarterly, Speculon, Spires, Vacancy, The Zone and blah blah blah. He has interviewed for SFsite.com, Speculon and the Nebraska Center for Writers. More of his reviews can be found here. When he's not studying medicine, he can be seen coaching Notre Dame (formerly with the Minnesota Vikings as an assistant coach), or writing masterpieces of journalistic advertising, or making guest appearances in a novel by E. Lynn Harris. All other rumored Web appearances are lies.