Book review: Sum: 40 Tales From the Afterlife, by David Eagleman

I SUPPOSE THERE COULD BE people who dislike Canongate's latest find: those who lie awake nights, worrying about adverts on the sides of buses that use the words "probably", "no" and "God". Anglican traditionalists still coming to terms with women priests. Those whose blood pressure rises at the notion, heaven forfend, that God could actually be a woman. Anyone who blanks out all thought of what might happen at the moment of their death. The uninquisitive. Those, dare one say it, without poetry in their souls.

For the rest – the millions who even in a post-religious, secular society find themselves at unexpected moments wondering who or what God is, if he's not a little old man sitting on a cloud – David Eagleman's 40 miniature musings on heaven, creation and the afterlife will expand their universe with delight and possibility, showing in the process what a mysterious and profound thing the human imagination can be.

God, it turns out, is a little old man, although he's not sitting on a cloud. I shouldn't be telling you this because it's a surprise, but most of the tales here contain surprises within surprises so I'm hoping you'll forgive me.

And anyway, that's only one hypothesis. God is also a collection of dim-witted individuals who made us just so we'd go off and discover the meaning of life, the universe and everything and report back. Sadly, they're so stupid they can't understand us when we tell them that we haven't discovered the answer yet.

Or what if God were a woman with a heart too big to keep anyone out of heaven; or a married couple; or a trillion deities governing every created thing?: "One god has control over objects that are made of chrome. Another over flags. Another over bacteria. The god of telephones, the god of bubble gum, the god of spoons: these are the players in an incalculably large panoply of deific bureaucracy." (They fall out.)

And then there's the nature of the afterlife itself: a waiting-room where you stay until your name is said on Earth for the very last time; or where you get to sit in a lounge with leather sofas with free coffee and biscuits; where you meet versions of yourself at different ages; or where all the gods of all the world's major and minor religions camp out on the edge of town and drink wine together.

Of the 40 tales here, the longest only runs to three pages. You'd think you could get through them in an evening. But behind the wit and the playfulness there are profound questions about what it is to be human and, yes, about the nature of God, and you find yourself spending time pondering that.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist from Texas who proves in this little collection that you don't need to write a novel to deal in big ideas. Nor do you have to be a poet to make poetry out of the myriad complexities of life.