Review: On the Other Side by Carrie H. Fletcher

Challenges: 
Around the Year in 52 Books: A magical realism novel
Read the World: Europe (hosted over at habitica.com) 



I just saw a video on Youtube about books you shouldn’t have read (here) and I feel like this was me and this book. I have followed Carrie  on Youtube for a while now and I really enjoy her videos and her personality, so when she came out with this book in 2016 I figured I would like it too. 

It’s the story about a young woman who manages to negotiate her way out of her mother’s iron grip and try to create a life for herself doing what she really wants to do. We only meet this woman, Evie, after she is dead, though. She can’t get in to her personal heaven, because the secrets she has kept throughout her life are weighing her down. She must travel back and find a way to share her secrets with her loved ones in order to be able to pass through the door to heaven. 

We follow her a s she journeys back to the world of the living to impart her secrets and along the way we get the story of her life and the hard decisions she had to make. 

The reason I think I shouldn’t have read this book is because it’s magical realism. I didn’t realize this before I began and as it slowly dawned on me, I got more and more frustrated. Magical realism just really isn’t for me. So I was annoyed when this turned out to be just that. But even before I realized this, I had some issues. When I started reading it just didn’t really seem to click for me. I found the prose a little lengthy with details and metaphors that seemed unnecessary to me. And then I just couldn’t figure out the setting, either time or place. It seemed to take place in our world, but then magical realism…And I tried figuring out when the main part of the story was taking place. If Evie died in her old age in our time, her early story should have been set in the 1960s or so according to my calculations. And that fitted quite well with her domineering mother and the misogyny at her work. But then her co-worker had a cellphone. Not being able to figure out a time and place for a story unsettles me, because I like to imagine the scenes in my head and not knowing which time period to imagine was quite frustrating. In the end I settled for a Penelope-esque vibe, and that seemed to do it. 

Then I also had a problem with the basic plot. Like why did Evie’s mother have SO much influence on her life decisions and even Jim’s too? There doesn’t really seem to be a good reason behind that, but this was essentially what carried the plot. 


I did like some things about this book. I particularly enjoyed the chapters where Vincent and Evie first met and got together, but in the end the magical realism and the questionable plot device put me off. I gave this book 2,5 stars out of 5. 

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