Jenni Fagan's fifth novel, The Delusions, is a metaphysical satire set in a vast afterlife processing centre. The book opens with an epigraph from Philip José Farmer's Venus on the Half-Shell, setting a tone of cosmic absurdity. The story takes place in 'the largest soul terminus in existence', where the dead must confront their self-delusions before being processed or dissolved.
The queues in Processing have always been long, but now they are growing worse as the universe may be winding down Earth. The Leaderboard has gone mad, and a million cats suddenly appear. Fagan targets greed, politics, celebrity, smartphone culture, and those who think digital simulacra can save them from death. Delusions are expelled as live eels in public, revealing the dead's true nature.
The narrator is Edi, a former cancer patient who works as an Admin. She is irritable and focused only on her son, who she believes will soon join the queue. Edi's monologue is dense with worldbuilding, covering Admin organisation and the Universal Beyond. While other characters feel thin, the humour and invention keep the reader engaged.
The Delusions has been compared to the film A Matter of Life and Death, but Fagan reverses its paternalistic values. The afterlife's processes begin to seem delusory themselves, run by hypocritical overlords. The novel shifts from satire to a celebratory pathos, exploring what it means to own who you are.
