The All Souls' Waiting Room
by
Book Cover & Preview Text
Formats
Book Details
About the Book
A hapless eighteen year-old girl named Johnnine Hapgood, raised by hard-drinking, free-loving followers of the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich during the nineteen-fifties of McCarthy-era America, tries to commit suicide. Her subsequent out-of-body experience lands her in the infinitely vast All Souls’ Waiting Room, where all souls go for re-routing in between lives. Here Johnnine meets Xofia, the ageless ethereal essence of feminine wisdom ) banished from Earth for the last five thousand years), as well as the shades of Wilhelm (Willie) Reich, Sigmund (Shlomo) Freud, and Carl (Gussie) Jung. Before The Powers-That-Be decide if Johnnine will be granted a ticket for a "p.d.," or premature departure, she must watch her Life Review film. The action unfolds on two different, highly contrasting planes: that of the cinema verite version of Johnnine’s tumultuous young life in Greenwich Village, caught up in an ideological struggle between deadly serious extremists, and the absurd All Souls’ antics of operatic cherubs, competitive (and still analytical) dead psychoanalysts, and the alluring, enigmatic Xofia, who has a voice like Tallulah Bankhead and a figure like Marlene Dietrich. Xofia's warm, biting humor is a good match for Johnnine’s mordant, sarcastic wit as she attempts to convince the demoralized young woman that "even though Earth is a rough and dirty sandbox, it’s the only sandbox we have." Revelations are in store for all visitors, returning or non-returning, to the All Souls’ Waiting Room.
About the Author
Wright is the author of two non-fiction books, Gymnastics on Horseback, and Patchy Coastal Fog: From Manhattan to (West) Marin in 24 Not-so-Easy Stages, (both out in print). Her humor has appeared in "California Living" magazine and The New York Time Review. Wright’s dramatic readings, personal essays, and plays have been produced on Bay Area radio stations KPFA and KWMR. She is a 2001 recipient of a Marin Arts Council grant for her play, Liz’s Strata. This is her first published full-length work of creative fiction. Born and raised in New York City, Wright now lives with her husband in Inverness Park, California. She lives in Southern Colorado but still considers herself biographically bi-coastal.