I spent lockdown following BookTubers, Bookstagrammers and BookTok to see what everyone was reading. I found out that those under a certain age all read the same things. So several new writers came to my attention --- V. E. Schwab, Colleen Hoover, Ottessa Moshfegh --- and many of my favorite classic authors were becoming famous all over again, especially Wilde and Poe.

However, there was one name that stuck out, a writer who was dedicated to queer representation in mass market literature: TJ Klune. I read his fantasy novel THE HOUSE IN THE CERULEAN SEA and liked it. So I was looking forward to checking out his latest work, UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR. It, too, is a fantasy book offering quality queer representation. But, even more importantly, it’s a fable about life and death and grief that anyone of any gender, race or spiritual background would enjoy.

"TJ Klune gives us an immersive and fun romp through a world that may or may not be real, but it doesn’t matter. His joy and whimsy are evident and palpable in every chapter."

The novel starts with a stellar example of “show, don’t tell,” a key component in all good storytelling. Although the prose is a tad verbose, the characterizations are explored through their most telling element: their behavior. And this one is a doozy. Mr. Wallace Price is listening to a longtime employee at his very successful firm tell him about her woes --- a husband out of work, a child who can’t afford to finish college, etc. --- and the employee thanks him for caring and understanding. After this several-page diatribe, Price turns around and fires her on the spot. He cancels the financial assistance the firm had originally offered the employee’s child and sends her off crying with a pair of security guards to be shoved out of the building. He is a narcissistic, pompous bullhorn of a human being; within pages, he is also a dead human being.

Wallace doesn’t know where he is and won’t accept his fate, as told to him by the mercurial Mei. She is his guide into this strange world of the afterlife in which he has landed. They are on their way to meet Hugo, the heavenly guy who helps to steer the newly deceased through what is essentially a question-and-answer period in which they go back through their experiences and see where they did or did not do well. He runs a tea shop named after the captain of the boats on the Styx. That’s the fact, Jack. This is both a comical and heartbreaking fantasy about how we are followed by our decisions in life as in death and that there can be a new beginning to who you are, even in death.

I wouldn’t call UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR a spiritual book. It feels like a very human look at a very human characteristic --- tolerance. Learning tolerance for others, opening up yourself to vulnerability and finding that you are stronger, kinder and more wondrous that you may have ever thought in the past. TJ Klune gives us an immersive and fun romp through a world that may or may not be real, but it doesn’t matter. His joy and whimsy are evident and palpable in every chapter. And maybe, just maybe, there is a lesson here for some of us before we have to go meet Hugo.