Afterlife

by Paul Monette

Afterlife is a haunting and unforgettable story of men facing loss and seeking love, movingly capturing the moment in the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic was completely devastating the American gay community. Here, National Book Award winner Paul Monette depicts three men of various economic and social backgrounds, all with one thing in common: They are widowers, in a way, and all of their lovers died of AIDS in an LA hospital within a week of one another.

Steven, Sonny, and Dell meet weekly to discuss how to go on with their lives despite the hanging sword of being HIV positive. One tries to find a semblance of normalcy; one rebels openly against the disease, choosing to treat his body as a temple that he can consecrate and desecrate at will; and one throws himself into fierce political activism. No matter what path each one takes, they are all searching for one thing: a way to live and love again.

Afterlife finds Paul Monette at his most autobiographical, portraying men in a situation that he himself experienced, and one that he described to critical acclaim in the award-winning Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Gay, Gay Fiction, Queer, Contemporary, Novels

272 pages, Paperback

First published February 17, 1990

About the author

Online Guide to Paul Monette's papers at UCLA:
http://findaid.oac.cdlib.org/findaid/...

In novels, poetry, and a memoir, Paul Monette wrote about gay men striving to fashion personal identities and, later, coping with the loss of a lover to AIDS.

Monette was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1945. He was educated at prestigious schools in New England: Phillips Andover Academy and Yale University, where he received his B.A. in 1967. He began his prolific writing career soon after graduating from Yale. For eight years, he wrote poetry exclusively.

After coming out in his late twenties, he met Roger Horwitz, who was to be his lover for over twenty years. Also during his late twenties, he grew disillusioned with poetry and shifted his interest to the novel, not to return to poetry until the 1980s.

In 1977, Monette and Horwitz moved to Los Angeles. Once in Hollywood, Monette wrote a number of screenplays that, though never produced, provided him the means to be a writer. Monette published four novels between 1978 and 1982. These novels were enormously successful and established his career as a writer of popular fiction. He also wrote several novelizations of films.

Monette's life changed dramatically when Roger Horwitz was diagnosed with AIDS in the early 1980s. After Horwitz's death in 1986, Monette wrote extensively about the years of their battles with AIDS (Borrowed Time, 1988) and how he himself coped with losing a lover to AIDS (Love Alone, 1988). These works are two of the most powerful accounts written about AIDS thus far.

Their publication catapulted Monette into the national arena as a spokesperson for AIDS. Along with fellow writer Larry Kramer, he emerged as one of the most familiar and outspoken AIDS activists of our time. Since very few out gay men have had the opportunity to address national issues in mainstream venues at any previous time in U.S. history, Monette's high-visibility profile was one of his most significant achievements. He went on to write two important novels about AIDS, Afterlife (1990) and Halfway Home (1991). He himself died of AIDS-related complications in 1995.

In his fiction, Monette unabashedly depicts gay men who strive to fashion personal identities that lead them to love, friendship, and self-fulfillment. His early novels generally begin where most coming-out novels end; his protagonists have already come to terms with their sexuality long before the novels' projected time frames. Monette has his characters negotiate family relations, societal expectations, and personal desires in light of their decisions to lead lives as openly gay men.

Two major motifs emerge in these novels: the spark of gay male relations and the dynamic alternative family structures that gay men create for themselves within a homophobic society. These themes are placed in literary forms that rely on the structures of romance, melodrama, and fantasy.

Monette's finest novel, Afterlife, combines the elements of traditional comedy and the resistance novel; it is the first gay novel written about AIDS that fuses personal love interests with political activism.

Monette's harrowing collection of deeply personal poems, Love Alone: 18 Elegies for Rog, conveys both the horrors of AIDS and the inconsolable pain of love lost. The elegies are an invaluable companion to Borrowed Time.

Before the publication and success of his memoir, Becoming a Man, it seemed inevitable that Monette would be remembered most for his writings on AIDS. Becoming a Man, however, focuses on the dilemmas of growing up gay. It provides at once an unsparing account of the nightmare of the closet and a moving and often humorous depiction of the struggle to come out. Becoming a Man won the 1992 National Book Award for nonfiction, a historical moment in the history

Reviews

[LenaRibka · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is amazing how Paul Monette deals with such a difficult topic as AIDS.

But it was HE who inspired me to research and to learn more about the time of the epidemic.

It was HIS memoirs, Borrowed Time: An AIDS Memoir and Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, that made me a firm and absolute fan of this exceptional MAN.

It is HIS writing that I admire every time I come across his eloquent, intimate and breathtakingly beautiful prose.


Afterlife is my first fictional, not biographical book by Paul Monette, and I can assure you, I'm going to read EVERYTHING he wrote, and even if I won't like all of his work, I know that I'll never stop to love this author, and I'll never stop to grieve that he lost his life to AIDS that early.

Afterlife is a story of a group of men that lost their lovers within one week to AIDS and who met each other in the hospital. They are very different, from the family background, social state and way of living, but the big A(like AIDS) and the big D(like DEATH, because all of them are positive) have brought them together, and intermingled their life paths in an inevitable way.

If you read his memoirs BEFORE, you'll see parallels between the characters in this book and Paul Monette's life. So, it's a fiction, but in many ways kinda a biographical novel.

I know it's a difficult topic, but in spite of it, I love the ending, full of hope and life. I'll for sure re-read it someday.

[Ije the Devourer of Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

A riveting story of a group of men who are bereaved and having to deal with life after loss. This is so beautifully told and the book opens with us meeting the group of men whose partners all died from aids in the same ward.

Steven is the man who has kept them all together in their grief, with regular meals and get togethers, but now he needs to find space for himself to deal with his own grief and anger.

Dell is still dealing with his loss which has taken root in him and formed a deep hatred of a society that ignores the Aids crisis and the loss of so many. He finds satisfaction and a cause as an urban guerilla.

And Sonny who is a greek beauty continues to live in denial seeking both base and deeper things of the heart. After so many meaningless men he has found and both lost his one great love but he is beautiful and seeks a greater destiny which goes back to the ancient past that he believes he is part of.

Together the three men meet other people and circumstances, the pain of their loss never fully healing, but always pushing them forward into new things, new frontiers and realisation.

I loved this story. It is multi dimensional with so much going on with the characters, but not so much that the reader is lost. The story deals with the survivors or those who are not dead yet, and provides a realistic glimpse of life after loss.

We see grief, healing and anger, and the desire to seek new life even in the face of certain death.

The relationships in the story felt so realistic, difficult at times but honest with the characters each dealing or failing to deal with their personal losses. The book is also about family and friendship, and how people in pain can come together and almost unwittingly provide support and love for each other, allowing each other the freedom to be, but being there for them when in need.

The best part of the story for me was the dinner party scene at the end. It made me think that people can give the deepest love and compassion by doing the simplest of things.

Paul Monette had a way of writing that just embeds the story into the reader's soul, spirit and body. This story with its emotions and friendships and love and turbulence is one that will always stay with me.

[Ricky Schneider · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Paul Monette's poetry, I was eager to check out some more of his fiction. Afterlife has been sitting on my shelf for far too long and I'm so glad I finally got to it. The first Monette I ever read was Taking Care of Mrs. Carroll. I found that novel to be brimming with beautiful writing but the improbable actions of the characters and the even more implausible results of those actions made it difficult to buy into. Thankfully, I had none of those issues with Afterlife. It is the intimate and unforgettable story of three friends who are all "widows" after having lost their significant others to the rampant rise of AIDS as it is ravaging the gay community during the late eighties.

Monette lived through these times himself and so he imbues his novel with authentic depictions of grief and hopelessness while also capturing the vibrancy and solidarity that carried the Gay community through this horrific time. Not only were these men suffering and dying left and right, but they also had to endure it all while being misunderstood, degraded and viscously hated through the whole experience. They had death wished on them publicly and were told they even deserved to die. Monette specifically highlights how the church used God to condemn the sick to hell and justify the negligence of society to do anything about the disease except to weaponize it. It is so imperative that we read stories like this to honor their deaths and to keep the memory of the atrocities they endured fresh in our mind so we hopefully will never disregard human beings that are suffering in this way again. It's truly unforgivable what happened to these sons, daughters, brothers, and friends that just wanted to live and love openly and honestly like the rest of the world.

The brilliance of Afterlife is in its defiant persistence to celebrate gay love in the face of unthinkable bleakness. The novel itself doesn't shy away from the joy these men find in each other's arms and the comfort they find in their bodies despite the impending doom that pervades every waking moment. In the midst of this taboo epidemic they somehow manage to glean a sense of community, found-family, and a reason to live, no matter how briefly. However, these characters definitely do struggle to get up and brave the insurmountable odds and heartless society that they face every single day and Monette doesn't let the dire stakes at hand recede from the reader's consciousness for a second. But the sheer strength of these characters to go on and find some semblance of hope and love at all is a true miracle and it's inspiring to witness.

I would be remised not mention the dated and offensive language Monette sometimes allows to pollute his poetic prose. This is so disheartening and upsetting because the overall message the author is clearly aiming for is one of inclusivity and community but he undermines that notion when he uses derogatory terms for lesbians, teeters on antisemitism, or outright ignores many members of the very community he endeavors to unite. In this way, Afterlife is a relic of a very specific time in all its glory and gracelessness. The lack of Trans representation is, at best, just plain inaccurate and should be noted and used a teachable moment on the glaring blind spot in the ethos of the entire gay rights movement of this time before the more inclusive LGBT era.

If you can get past or, rather, learn from the mistakes of the time, Afterlife contains lots of beautiful examples of Monette's tender prose. There are a plethora of quotable and highlight-worthy passages within its pages...

"Every single night before he went to sleep, he had to be finished with the world, in case he woke up too sick to go on. All he knew was this: before he went he would do what he had to, whatever it was, to let them know his people wouldn't go quietly anymore."

Monette is exceptionally gifted in expressing the beauty and the beast of the lives that these characters fought for daily. It was empowering and exhilarating to see each of them overcome so much to make the most of each moment they have. They squeeze every last ounce of joy, love, and hope out of their cruel circumstances. I immediately fell in love with Steven, in all of his broken-hearted despondency. I can definitely relate. I grew to love Mark and Dell was probably my favorite. His complicated response to his situation was devastating and raw. I also really enjoyed Linda and Margaret as they injected much needed and appreciated feminine energy into this boy's club. They all have great growth as characters and interesting arcs in the story.

Though not a perfect novel, Afterlife is like it's three main protagonists. It's transgressive (for its time), emotionally complex, relentlessly hedonistic, and tragically human in its fallibility. I've read some ignorant reviews by younger generations that lament the pervasiveness of AIDS in the world that these characters inhabit but these reviews only underline how necessary and important books like this are. We need to keep in mind that the author lived through these times, lost many loved ones during this epidemic and even died from the disease himself. AIDS truly WAS pervasive. We should honor the generations who lived with our "trauma-porn" fiction as their cold reality and be nothing but grateful that a world like the one in Afterlife seems so inconceivable to us now.

[Dusty Myers · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am immediately distrustful of a novel in which its central character doesn't really have to worry about money or work and ends up with someone richer and more attractive than anyone who'll ever read this blog. This man, named Mark in this novel, is there in the opening scene: "Mark's in television," says Steven, our protagonist. "Major heartthrob. Eats gorgeous men for breakfast" (10). And because this is a gay novel it's clear to everyone that we'll need to "see" this man naked, and hopefully let our stand-in have hot sex with him. And lo. And behold.

What Afterlife is then, immediately, is a fantasy. And yes, it's an important fantasy, at a time when gay men had watched so many of their friends and lovers die, one after another, from AIDS that a fantasy I'm sure was a small but welcome consolation. And I have nothing wrong with fantasies. Angels in America bills itself as "a gay fantasia on national themes" and I think I wouldn't have had a problem with Monette's novel if it made a similar move at the beginning. Instead it makes these weak attempts at history and contextualization. One character becomes a mild terrorist, calling in bomb threats to homophobic institutions. The novel satirizes (I think? or maybe we're meant to honor it?) the new age culture of California in the 80s/90s. If the central plot arc wasn't such a fairy tale I could have taken these sideplots seriously.

The writing, also, is uneven. I was going to say bad, because, like: "For Steven [a travel agent] travel was over. He'd become a walking bad advertisement, like a misspelled sandwich board" (9). But then Monette surprises me with these moment of sharp observation. At a meeting for AIDS survivors: "Everyone seemed to be taking something different and was armed with newsletters and offprints, fierce as an eighth-grade science project" (75).

It's a great line, because so honest. And so why the phoniness in which all his characters are weakly dressed? And why did Richard McCann call it "an achievement of the imagination" in USA Today?

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I enjoyed Monette's memoir, Becoming a Man, and this one appeared on a lot of classic queer lit lists, though I found it disappointing. It feels like writing - not authentic or particularly natural - although there was enough to keep me interested. There are a ton of useless adverbs in this writing. I think at one point someone "notices insignificantly." The dark matter of the book - the plague itself - feels more like a plot device than an affliction to be mulled over, even in the final chapters. The three main characters share the trauma of having lost partners and knowing they are destined to follow, and yet these losses feel like distant and half-forgotten parts of their lives. The sentiment that enters the book toward the end feels right, but the way the story builds is more like a romantic comedy than a thoughtful meditation. The bio included in the version I have states that Monette wrote several film novelizations on top of his other works. Not surprising. Still, I'm looking forward to reading his other memoir, Borrowed Time. He's a better reporter than he is a fiction writer.

[Kyle Likens · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm so conflicted about this book. On one hand Afterlife is written so beautifully and honestly and some of the passages are exquisite in their pathos and quiet relatability. And then on the other hand, i couldn't shake the feeling that Afterlife was either a gay Lifetime film or the precursor to the truly abysmal A Little Life. I found it almost offensive that literally every main male character was dying from AIDS; I get that in the time period that the book was set, the crisis was still in it's first wave, but to have all 5 men afflicted with AIDS was a little too unbelievable. And of course, there were the usual tropes and stereotypes that come part and parcel with literary gay fiction. Everyone is promiscuous, but one is especially slutty; vague campy references to Old Hollywood; the endless obsession with physical appearance. So on and so forth.

In the end, I appreciate what Afterlife was attempting to do but honestly it would be absolutely refreshing to read some LGBTQ + literary fiction with a positive outcome. Afterlife just left me depressed and almost convinced that we, as gay men, are seen as nothing but harmful stereotypes.

[John · Rating 1 out of 5]

I REALLY wanted to like this one. I went in with the highest of hopes, and at every point felt disappointed.

The book itself is a slog, feeling very dense and like the next chapter would never come. Perhaps that was intentional, with the heavy subject matter, but with unlikable characters and a middling through line, it does not make one want to push very far.

On the character front, the main three men the novel advertises are varying degrees heinous in quite unique ways. Steven feels the most neutral, waffling more between the deepest sorrow for his lost partner to the throws of what feels like teenage love. It's at times cringey and unrealistic, but tame. Dell is a broad strokes "terrorist", using his grief to justify anarchy to what would (in the real world) be a detriment to all those he leaves behind. But Sonny was the pinnacle of awful, so self absorbed from the start that any pages devoted to him feel as masturbatory as he'd like you to believe them to be. To come out of a queer, AIDS centered novel and his whole ark summed up as "I'm not gay now because a healer told me" is disrespectful to the queer community and reeks of some type of internal homophobia.

The ancillary characters (ironically the women of the novel) come out looking the best. I did not want any of the main three to succeed, to find any joy, because they are written at such an angry center point. Now, I completely understand the anger at the inaction at the center of the AIDS crisis, but this felt like a flogging of the reader, with no intention of levity or joy.

A real disaster, all around. Thoroughly disappointed.

[Grant Catton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn't say this is a great a novel or even a very good novel, but I think it's an important one because it catalogues and deals head-on, almost in real-time, with a very specific time and place and situation -- the thick of the AIDS crisis in the early 90s -- that is all too easily forgotten now, for a variety of reasons.

Monette's take on this time period is centralized in affluent Southern California, with a rotating 3rd person perspective view covering a handful of gay men who are loosely or closely tied to each other, and all either themselves dying of AIDS or suffering the loss of someone close to them who died of it.

He manages to keep the book fairly light hearted, with a lot of comedic elements in it, in spite of such a heavy subject matter. And it must have taken a lot of strength to write a book like this at a time when it must have seemed like the whole world was crashing down around him, as I believe Monette and his partner both died of AIDS themselves.

[Paula´s Brief Review · Rating 3 out of 5]

Otra historia triste con personajes tristes pero sin resultar un melodrama de" tomo y lomo"
Se deja leer pero no resulta inolvidable, quizás porque no llegas a conectar realmente con ninguno de los personajes, ni principales ni secundarios.

[Adam Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was so enraptured by Becoming a Man and Borrowed Time, that I moved right into Monette's fiction, starting with his first book, and then ground to a halt. This is his first fiction work I've picked up since then, I'm saving Last Watch of the Night for some unknown time in the future where I can savour it.
Monette's writing got better with AIDS, the books had a focus and that trend continues here, though for much of the first half of the book he struggles to overcome his old writing style, that of a privileged man writing from a pedestal and casting only half an eye at his subjects. Its especially difficult to write a book with all men, all white gay men, and be able to keep the characters separate. One supposes they're all friends due to their similarities but for the first half of the book I had no idea who was who, and I suppose I didn't really care. The second half of the book the action picks up and at the same time the story becomes more focused on just two people, rather than the confusing eight at the beginning, and the book became good. I was surprised, I was all set to give it a negative review but I'm glad I stuck with it.
The book details a life lived in between the falling bombs of the AIDS epidemic. There is desperation, such as when a character "called the Federal Building, demanding release of a drug that people were smuggling in from China." I understand the frustration, but actions like this led to the over-prescribing of AZT and the death of early patients.
As the novel continues Monette loses most of his detachment from the characters and once they become real this novel becomes the heart-felt AIDS crisis snap-shot it should be. It just takes a little too long to get there.

[Jenny Yates · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel - poignant, wry, and beautifully written - lets us in on what it felt like to be a gay man in the 80s, when the AIDS epidemic started devouring young lives. The three principle characters have all lost their lovers, and have come together to support each other. Each of them is also living with a death sentence. They are all riveting characters, and they handle the situation very differently. One seeks revenge on an uncaring society, one seeks spiritual redemption, and one tries again (most terrifyingly) for love. This is a powerful novel, well worth reading.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book strikes major and minor chords in me. I don't have much in common with any one character, but I understand watching friends wither and die, even getting impatient for the end to come.

I admire how deftly Monette shifts among points of view. And for all the moments that make me smile, there's a sense of hopelessness that never goes away and ends up dominating by the end. I've read this book before, and I'm sure I'll read it again, but for now, I'm worn out and ready to let go.

[Richard Jespers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Story of three AIDS “widows” who are also doomed (HIV +). Good, yet some
how left me empty (the author’s purpose?).

[Bethany Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel follows three men in LA who’ve all lost their partners to AIDS. They meet up regularly to figure out how to keep going, each dealing with it in their own way: trying to get back to normal, rebelling against the disease, or diving into sometimes frightening activism. It’s a raw look at grief, fear, and the search for love and hope in the midst of the HIV/AIDS crisis. This is a partly autobiographical novel as the author wrote this after losing his partner to AIDS.

“Steven realized he hadn’t looked in anybody’s eyes in over a year, not since the light began to go for Victor. Not even in his own eyes, not even in the mirror.”

Hauntingly beautiful, full of gorgeous prose and heavy topics, this is one novel that will stick with me. I rooted for Steven and Mark to stop being idiots (idiots in love is a favorite trope though) and figure things out. I was hoping Sonny would find his peace and Dell would recognize he wasn’t alone in his grief.

The found family is really, really strong here. Margaret had me in tears. Heather coming back. Linda making the sacrifice for Marcus. So much beauty in love and loss. Definitely an incredible story.

[Sebastian · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a far cry from Mrs. Carroll or Long Shot, but still a beautiful read. I'm noticing other reviews say that it felt like the novelization of a gay Lifetime movie and honestly, it kind of does, but I don't see that as a negative thing? Monette's writing, even when the style changes drastically from his earlier thick prose, is always clearly cinematic in vibe and intent. If this WAS a made for TV movie instead of a novel, it would have been incredibly timely for this era! And I'd watch the fuck out of it!

I will say, I loved Dell's plot the most by far. Sonny's is uncomfortable by the end but I think that's the point. And Steven & Mark, I'll admit, do feel like they're missing something? Maybe it's just because the book was three stories in one, but their romance is disjointed and a little unconvincing. Or maybe it's the fact that they're facing their end soon enough, and it's less a romance and more scraping out what love and connection they can each still get.

[Sohum · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strengths:
This book is an affective critique of a particular kind of mainstreamed gay life, and occupies well the positionalities and impossibilities of love in a time of grief and foreclosed possibility.
Weaknesses:
It's casually racist in a very blasé late 1980s way.
The ending is drawn out for an additional 20/30 pages.
The writing itself is not particularly well-crafted, but this may be a skewering of the excessive pastiche that marks, again, this era.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Steven’s life didn’t exist at all, which was fine with him.

I loved Monette's memoirs and his poetry. I didnt really like this novel however mainly for the excessive baroqueness of it all, almost parodies of the people involved. The book ends in a softer more sensitive tone, still think he is a much better at nonfiction.

[Marty Webb · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars but worth your time

[Susan Dennis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful novel exploring the life of AIDS widows.

[Soph · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted this to be better but the characters weren’t really distinct enough to connect with

[John Treat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gay boys in West Hollywood are nothing like the posse I run with or ever have, but the first sentence, and the last two, of this novel will stay with me forever.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engrossing and touching. Fascinating to read something from this period (it was published in 1990) and see how it compares to life today. I remember and related to all the feelings the characters go through and especially that blind rage and debilitating hopelessness. Thankfully Monette writes beautifully what makes humans survive -- specfically trust in other humans and love for them, even when sometimes there's absolutely no reason too. And sex. This would make a great TV series, would be great to show people today what this time was like since there's essentially a generation all but missing in our collective history.

[Hillary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have long been a fan of Paul Monette's work, and I was not disappointed by this novel, the first fictional prose of his I've read. It is as poetic and beautiful as his memoirs and his poetry. It's also, of course, terribly dated. My children, if they read this, will surely not understand or grasp the horrible truth of the "gay plague" that ravaged a generation. Monette's obviously knew this when he had Mark and Steven discuss whether it would always be like that and whether anyone in the future would understand..."maybe the gay ones will,""yeah but they'll have to see through all the lies. 'Cause history's just white folks covering their ass."

[Kathleen Hagen]

Afterlife, by Paul Monette, Narrated by Clinton Wade, Produced by Audible Inc., downloaded from audible.com.

This book involves three men who met in the hospital visiting their lovers who were dying from AIDS in the 1980’s. After they became widowers, they began to meet to support each other and even joined an AIDS survivors support group. This book involves the three men who all come to some conclusion regarding their future without their lovers. Very good and in some ways quite heart-warming.

[Leigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that makes me wish that Goodreads allowed half-stars-- I feel very 3.5-starry about it. I love all of Monette's nonfiction and I feel ambivalent about all of his fiction, but this is my favorite of his novels. When it's good, it's really good, and I get very emotionally invested.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

We read I believe borrowed time and afterlife in tandum at the bookclub. Afterlife deals with the survivors of aids victims. Excellent book.As I recall I cried a lot but I do cry at the drop of a hat.

[Richard Dagneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

I must have read this book a half a dozen times, when it first came out. As with all things related to AIDS in the 80's it seems a bit dated now, but still a liberating read. I remember hoping I could find a relationship that could weather storms like this.

[Patricia Boyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

As usual, another of this author's great autobiographical books.

[S.x.x. · Rating 3 out of 5]

AIDS AIDS AIDS AIDS... You've got AIDS, I've got AIDS, we've all got AIDS. Sing it now!!

[Sam]

I'm sorry this might be okay but I just can't with the narration on the audiobook any more