George Pringate’s Last Hurrah

Stewart Hoffman

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

Hell is tears, pain, and depression, baked into a cake made of misery and despair.

Heaven is meet-cutes and puppies, life-affirming moments, and hanging out with Elvis!

George Pringate is dead, and he really wants to go to Heaven! But first, he must survive Hell’s assassin, confront his demons with the help of his afterlife counsellors, and most critically, be honest with himself.

Review by Nigel (010623) Rating (8/10)

Review by Nigel
Book Source: Purchased
Rating 8/10
This is the story of George Pringate, recently deceased.

George finds himself in a sort of alternative reality version of his life, in limbo between heaven and hell. He is told he is to be hunted to decide if he should go to heaven or to hell. Not the ‘traditional’ heaven or hell but a version of his own life, one good and one bad.

In the bad place everything goes wrong, the traffic lights are always red, the car breaks down or runs out of petrol, the trains are always late or cancelled, basically an eternal bad day. Alternatively, in the good place, everything seems to be in your favour, an eternal perfect day; so everything for George to play for.

The problem is that George is a bit of a layabout whose idea of an exciting time is to veg in front of his favourite movie slowly drinking himself into oblivion. His life has been a bit of a non-event and some of those in charge feel this is a precious gift wasted… the sort of thing that gets you sent to Hell.

The story alternates between George’s life experiences and his efforts to avoid Hell’s representative, who thinks that the bad place is the right reward for a loser like George.

This is a nice tale with some fairly obvious lessons for us all. It reads well and had me smiling. I particularly liked the secular nature of a heaven and hell described without any basis in religion – interesting concept.

An entertaining read and perhaps a cautionary tale for the indolent side of our nature.
Nigel (1st June 2023)