Trip

The wild and quirky debut novel from Barrodale (You Are Having a Good Time, a story collection) ranges across two continents and the afterlife to tell the story of a mother and son’s failure to connect. Sandra, a career-driven PBS correspondent, arranges with her ex-husband to place their autistic 15-year-old son, Trip, in a treatment center before flying to Nepal to cover a conference on dying. There, Sandra dies from a freak accident and is guided into a Tibetan Buddhist version of the afterlife by one of the conference attendees, who reads out loud from a religious text on his phone (“Do not be attached to your surroundings. Instead, look forward to a greater endeavor”). Meanwhile, Trip has run away from the treatment center and, while hitchhiking, is picked up by an unstable man named Anthony, who drives them to a party on a hurricane-stricken island off the coast of Georgia. After the pair get into a misadventure involving a stolen boat, Sandra desperately attempts to enter another body in order to save Trip. The story lines never quite converge, beyond providing a frame for Sandra to contend with her regret over neglecting Trip. Still, Trip’s adventure story is great fun, and Barrodale’s depiction of the afterlife is amusing and wonderfully surreal. It’s a hoot. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House. (Sept.)