WhatsApps from Heaven: Bereavement in the Twenty-First Century

Hamlin debuts with an uplifting if far-fetched account of her search for answers about what comes after death. After Hamlin’s husband, Patrick, died of cancer in 2019, she was frustrated by the clergy’s noncommittal responses to her inquiries about the afterlife, until a hospital chaplain’s certainty encouraged her to seriously consider the possibility of life after death. Despite having “no religious faith,” Hamlin, spurred on by a close friend and spiritual healer, began to ask for signs from her husband. Early on, she asked Patrick to send her a white feather and later received a WhatsApp message from a friend who, unaware of Hamlin’s cosmic request, reported that white feathers had floated down to her while she gardened. The synchronicities accumulated from there, with lights turning on inexplicably, pens going missing, and largely unintelligible WhatsApp messages coming in from friends who claimed not to have written them. As the author read up on the afterlife and visited mediums, she found comfort in her blossoming conviction that the “spirit survives, and so does love.” The story sometimes comes across as a collection of portentous incidents rather than a coherent narrative, and skeptics will remain unconvinced, but the mystically minded will find pathos in Hamlin’s trajectory from agnostic to believer. This has its charms. (Aug.)