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The Afterlife: Book Summary

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The Afterlife: Book Summary
Book Portfolio for “The Afterlife”
In the book, The Afterlife, by Gary Soto, Chuy is killed in the men's bathroom of a dance club. The book is all about him and his journey as a ghost through Fresno, California. He meets another ghost who has just died and falls in love with her. Unfortunately, he finds himself disappearing slowly limb by limb. He learns the story of Crystal, the dead girl he met, and how she died. He also finds a man who dies homeless, becoming friends with him. As he tries to find the person who killed him, by running into people he once knew, he realizes how much he really is loved.
I would want to ask the author what was going through his head when he wrote how Chuy died. In most books, the main character dies heroically. In this book, Chuy dies an uninteresting death that almost made me put the book down. I would also like to ask the author what happened to Crystal before she died. I could not fully understand what was explained about her life. I would also like to ask who Chuy calls “yellow shoes” why he killed him. Was it because he commented on his shoes, or was it because he said ‘hey girlie” into the mirror?
I would not recommend this book to many people. It is confusing and not very interesting. The book itself was okay, but in my opinion, it had more potential, so it seemed not as good as I expected. Also, the ending was the worst part of all. The storyline was good, but I expected more out of the ending, and it was not there. If anyone were to like this book, it would be people who are curious about the afterlife, because the author made up a different perspective of the afterlife for people to read.
A flashback is something an author uses to bring the reader back in time to help them understand an event happening in the present. Usually, a writer uses it to let the reader know something that happened previously in the character’s life without starting at that point in the book. A character can have a flashback in a dream or

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