Title: A Short Stay in Hell
Author: Steven L. Peck
Publisher: Strange Violin Editions
Year Published: 2012
Genre: Fantasy/After-life novel
(Reviewed by Rebecca Bateman)
A Short Stay in Hell has some elements of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Defending Your Life, and Groundhog Day. But, especially for a Mormon (despite the recent request, I’m still using this term for this book) reader, it is also a fabulous blow-your-paradigm-out-the-water mind shift. I can’t stop thinking about it. I have talked about it with nearly everyone I’ve come in contact since I began it.
Its importance for a Mormon thinker goes both ways: it opens your mind to the idea that, if your religion happened not to be “the true one,” how would you respond and adapt?; and, if the Mormon religion happens to be the one, like in the South Park episode, this book creates a window of understanding and compassion for those who don’t think like you. (The coffee section especially made me snicker.)
Peck’s writing is clean, straight-forward, and descriptive; nothing elaborate nor elegant. And yet, he has some beautifully crafted ideas. I was immediately charmed on the first page with the phrase “a brief love can structure and define the very topology of our consciousness ever after.”
And this one:
“Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth?” (p. 52)
And this:
“How do you stay with someone when there are no dreams to build?” (p. 63)
A Short Stay has a subtle humor which I appreciated. The initial interview with the gatekeeper of Hell was a fantastic contradiction and disjointed image of bureaucratic humor and pagan realism.
He doesn’t have fully fleshed-out, nuanced characters. There are some relationships where hundreds of years go by, but we only get a blink of that personality. It often felt like time was glossed over – because, duh, eons – and time spent developing these missing areas might have given the book and the characters a little more substance; OR, rightly so, might have only invited the reader to the intense boredom and monotony the protagonist felt.
I gained several insights as I read and scribbled them in the margins. I found it an interesting thought that, no matter where we are, we will create little societies within those spaces. Relationships and personal interactions are important and make us who we are. Being that some of my work revolves around promoting The Golden Rule, I was delighted to see that its universality carried into Hell as well. I couldn’t help thinking that, despite the eternal damnation present in this scenario, there are ways to find and do good there. It comes down to helping others and seeing beauty in hidden places.
Man makes his own hell. Man is his own devil. And Man is his own God. Man makes his own heaven.
Rebecca worked in the Utah State House of Representatives, helped to organize the 2015 Parliament Of World Religions, and is currently the Executive Director for LDS Earth Stewardship. She spends her spare time with interfaith work, mentoring a refugee family, and serving on the Board of the Golden Rule Project.