The Things We Learn When We're Dead by Charlie Laidlaw

Small decisions can have unintended consequences, but sometimes we get a second chance.

On the way home from a dinner party she didn't want to attend, Lorna Love steps into the path of an oncoming car. When she wakes up she is in what appears to be a hospital - but a hospital in which her nurse looks like a young Sean Connery. She is served wine for supper and everyones avoids her questions.

It soon transpires that she is in Heaven, or on HVN. Because HVN is a lost, dysfunctional spaceship, and God the aging hippy captain. She seems to be there by accident. Or does God have a higher purpose after all?

At first Lorna can remember nothing. As her memories return - some good, some bad - she realises that she has decisions to make and that she needs to find a way home.

I have heard this book being compared to The Wizard of Oz, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Lovely Bones and it is true that there are influences from those books throughout. However, I stress the word influence because, in my opinion, this book is very much better than all three of those books.

This is a book which refuses to be put into any specific genre. It is humorous, quirky and moving  and I enjoyed it very much. Alongside the death of Lorna is the story of her life which Mr Laidlaw tells with a detailed eye for the minutae of every day living. Changing from the present to the past is flawlessly achieved throughout and I was enthralled by the believable characters regardless of whether they were mortal or celestial.

This original story is well worth reading. It is a story of life and how the small decisions we make have an impact on ourselves and those around us. I highly recommend this unusual book. There is something for everyone within it's pages and I think most people would enjoy finding this in their Christmas stocking.


ISBN: 978 1786150356

Publisher: Accent Press

About the Author

Charlie Laidlaw was born in Paisley and is a graduate of the University of Edinburgh. He has been a national newspaper journalist and worked in defence intelligence. He now runs his own marketing consultancy in East Lothian. He also wrote The Herbal Detective under the name of Charles Gray. He is married with two grown up children and lives in Gullane.