Customer Reviews

Cloud 8

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I ended up drinking 12-year-old scotch last night while putting together a piece of furniture that my TV set sits atop.

The Swedes put in some very easy-to-follow instructions. No words, just pix. It only took me an hour-and-a-half to do something that would have taken a sober/competent man a half-hour to do. I woke up this morning and looked at it. It wasn't leaning to one side or anything. Hurray for me.

I didn't know whether it was the scotch mixed with the fatigue of doing honest labor, or whether it was a good book, but I started reading "Cloud 8" by Grant Bailie (a Clevelander) last night after I slapped together the TV stand, and I couldn't stop. Got most of the way through the book by the time my wife returned from work. I got up early this morning and read it for about an hour and then finished it during my lunch hour. This guy's with a micro-press called "Ig Publishing." They have about 10 titles, most of them nonfiction books, notably drinking and eating guides to NY and a pretty good fiction book called, "For F***s Sake."

"Cloud 8" is about an ad copywriter who dies--and heaven turns out to be a place with a refrigerator full of free beer, a comfortable couch, a job where you're required to goof off and a TV set that lets you keep up with the living. It's a hoot and a half. Nothing is resolved in the book, the plot is loosey-goosey, and the writing is funny as hell and spot on. Give it a whirl if you're into unconventional fiction.

Every once in awhile you see a movie or read a book
you find yourself thinking about much longer than usual.
*Cloud 8* by Grant Bailie is that kind of book.
I know I will reread it very soon; I need a little
time before reading it again, so I can soak up
all the metaphysical and experiential nuances that
keep occuring to me since reading it the first time,
a few days ago. I read it breathlessly, greedily,
anxiously, joyfully in one night and one
morning

James Broadhurst wakes up after a fatal
car accident to find himself in an afterlife
just as tedious, boring and uninspiring,
if not more so, than his life had been. He
is assigned a boring roommate, is drafted into
a boring job and disovers his boss to be a spoiled
hypocrite. His escapes consist of alcohol and television, but
television in the aferlife consists of watching
all the endlessly tedious details of the daily
lives of all the people he loved and who, from
one degree or another, cared about him. Chief
among these is his father, who he disovers
was a much more caring person than he ever
realized during his actual life.

The most incredible thing about this book is
the way Grant Bailie forces, or beguiles the reader into
confronting the experiential evidence that the most fascinating
thing about life is the way we think about
it, is our thoughts and interpretations themselves. Everything
"out there" to learn from is right at hand; your
noisy upstairs neighbor might be an angel
in disguise; the guy sitting next to you on
a barstool might rescue you from an eternity
of terror for a night; "whatever gets you through
the night is alright," as John Lennon put it.

This book deserves to be a movie; it has exactly
the same attributes to offer us, potentially, as Bill
Murray's hilarious, haunting
and achingly profound, *Groundhog Day."
(...)

Listen up, producers: We need this movie!

(...)

or he could be the guy who sat next to you in math, or he could be one of the best writers out there who is standing in line behind you at the grocery store and you don't even know it as his writing reflects a kind of quiet, unassuming charm. He uses this wonderful, creative charm to carry you in and out of the memories of his character James' life; and is there with you while James views from the afterlife; the family whom he's left behind, which I found very touching.

I loved the way Grant writes with a wit yet at the same time a note of sadness appears now and again in between, and sometimes is the center of the humor. I don't know how he does that. You are laughing at something that written any other way, would make you sad and he's written it so that you laugh anyway. The articulate expression he was able to give to the afterlife catches you off guard and woundering if you aren't infact in it already.

...this is the funniest twist on the afterlife since the movie 'Defending Your Life'. I have ordered another copy since I keep giving away my copies as I want all my friends to read this book. It's beautiful and sad and funny and inventive and charming and a great time.

Thank you Grant!!

What if you died, went to "Heaven" and wound up working a job proofing copy for an office product that made no sense, had a distant and uncommunicative roommate, noticed that half the population were dead ringers for Abraham Lincoln, and spent most of your "free" time drinking beer while watching your family back on earth on television as your wife remarried and your father grew old? That is the basic premise of Cloud 8, a wonderfully subtle novel by Grant Bailie. His life after death is unlike any you have ever experienced, one not filled with angels, trumpets and an omniscient God, but moments of quiet and slow revelation (Revelation into what remains a mystery even at the end.)

Bailie's writing is an intriguing mix of humor and pathos, and I found myself thinking about this book long after I finished it. It is one of those rare novels that makes you think and think, and even after you are all thought out, you still aren't sure you know the answer, or if there is even an answer at all.

One of the best books I have read so far in 2003.

Grant Bailie is a true star, with a unique style. I laughed, I cried, I was pleasantly puzzled. This remarkable look at the afterlife is one of the most fast-paced, intriguing and best books I've ever read.

If you enjoy great storytelling and unique viewpoints, read Cloud 8 today.

I'm not sure Bailie can top this phenomenal work, but I can't wait to see how he tries.

WOW! Grant has done the impossibe, combine dead people, dead presidents and dead space into an amazing journey, and fit it into a nice readable thing made out of paper. If you read between the lines in the book you think you see nothing, but look again, and there is a world in a world. Grant could make the life of a third shift security guard seem as important as the President of the United States. This book makes you feel important, no matter who or what you do. I could not write the alphabet to save my life, but Grant sure does a good job for me.
Buy and you will like not only the book, but yourself!!!

A rather frightening look at where we go when we leave this place...In Bailie's work, we are forced to examine our deepest fears, not necessarily what IS in the afterlife, whether heaven or purgatory, but more startlingly, what ISN'T. No fluffy clouds, no long lost loved ones waiting in a bright, warm tunnel (though, a tunnel could perhaps exist later). Though lacking a linear plot, it is a well-written and introspective tale of self-discovery, and ultimately acceptance.

It's a glimpse into ourselves that Mr. Bailie offers, a way of looking at things that requires us looking at things askew from time to time. Realize that death is just the beginning, and in moving on from there, we should learn to appreciate the journey, and those we meet on it, a little more.

Cloud 8 is such a fast-reading joy, yet it leaves so many intriguingly unanswered questions there should definitely be a movie of this book and a sequel or two of the paperback to unravel the subtlely deep enigmas buried within. This small press effort does have a few too many loose ends to warrant a 5-star review, but it is easily worthy of cult status in the "afterlife books" sweepstakes and this Cleveland author is someone to watch.
Main character James Broadhurst went to "heaven" after he died in a car accident and discovered that the afterlife he is sentenced to is set in a seemingly infinite span of time with the new "world" slightly more boring then the one he left. As apparently disappointing as this heaven is, it seems that Broadhurst's own lack of imagination and curiousity keeps him from enjoying this bizarre locale as much as he should. A further book or two having our subdued hero unlock the meanings and possibilities of this slightly, yet profoundly, different landscape would be ideal. Looking forward to more from Grant Bailie. I hope he realizes he left just too many juicy questions dangling from this tree and that he comes back to harvest the rich fruit he's left for his readers, just out of reach.

CLOUD 8 certainly revolves around an interesting concept. The main character, James, dies. Instead of being greeted by St. Peter, Jesus or an angel, he is instead greeted by an Abraham Lincoln look-alike and enters an afterlife unlike any we have seen before. The hereafter is a mid-sized generic city and James is assigned an apartment and given a job at a large corporation editing a technical manual.

While this alternative vision of an afterlife is certainly unique, there is a pretty significant problem with it. It is simply a one trick concept that wears thin after about 70 pages in a book four times that long. Unfortunately, the author does little to make the story more interesting but instead largely glides through based on the uniqueness of his vision of life after death.

This leads to another big problem with the plot. James' afterlife is similar enough to our own lives that it is not that interesting. He gets up in the morning, eats breakfast, goes to work at the big company, works as a small cog in the big corporate machine, socializes with co-workers, tries to make meaningful connections with women over lunch dates, hits a bar after work, goes home and goes to bed. Sounds a lot like my own life and although I do not think of myself as a drab and uninteresting fellow, even I will admit that someone would get bored reading the ins and outs of my daily existence.

The author does throw a few things in to make the afterlife a bit interesting. Large numbers of residents dress like Abraham Lincoln (for reasons never explained), James' roommate is so vague that it raises some questions about the reality of other residents of this city of the dead, at one point the roommate simply disappears which raises further questions still and there is always free beer in the fridge. But these differences from the living world exist only around the edges of James' rather uninteresting "life."

Even the most interesting quirk of the afterlife, a television set that allows James to watch the lives of his loved ones left behind, is not used to full effect. For the most part James watches this for some entertainment value. Although occasionally it is used as a segue for flashbacks to James' life, these flashbacks are rarely used to understand larger issues that one may be pondering in such a limbo. Only once did the television-of-the-living pull at my heartstrings, near the end of the book when James turns the TV on and discovers that years had passed since his last viewing and that those years were now lost to him. At no time does James even speculate that this TV might have been placed there to tell him something important about what he is doing at that point of the afterlife.

This lack of insight regarding the possible meaning of the TV is representative of James' ridiculous apparent lack of interest in larger issues regarding his situtation. At one point he tries to find the parameters of his city and he at times ventures into different neighborhoods. Yet rarely does he delve into the types of questions with others regarding what their experiences have been in this city or whether they have any insights to share.

This issue is especially pertinent during a corporate meeting where James works. In an auditorium filled with every employee of the corporation for a discussion on cooperation, pictures from James' life are flashed on the screen and actors play out a scene involving James and his brothers. If this were you, wouldn't you feel the need to really try to figure out what was being said and why it was important for you to decipher the message, even if you were uncomfortable with having your life splashed before your co-workers? Yet James leaves the auditorium in agitation and holds only a single, very short and very vague conversation with his supervisor regarding the meeting. Does this guy need it pounded into his head that maybe he should be a bit more meaningfully aware of clues being provided to him?

Finally, I should mention that the author is not strong in terms of dialogue. Although he can create a decent scene, the conversations between characters consist of back and forth blather that in no way reflect how actual people speak, even when they are genuinely struggling for conversation.

I really wanted to like this book. It was recommended to me by a friend who had recommended two other books, one of which was good, the other of which was exceptional. Also, the author Grant Bailie lives in my hometown. Certainly being from Cleveland does not mean that one will be a good writer, but I was looking forward to supporting local talent. Alas, although CLOUD 8 is not without its moments, I can only say that if this is the afterlife, I can only hope to live a long and healthy life.