Mal Caldera is definitely dead and has a lot more living to do. The title character in Nadi Reed Perez’s The Afterlife of Mal Caldera is a retired rockstar who despite (mostly) hanging up the raucous behaviour, is still estranged from her staunchly Catholic family by the time she expires off the mortal coil and finds herself stuck, unable to move on.
With a story focusing less on plot and more on developing and exploring character dynamics, namely those between Mal and her still-alive sister Cris, and of Mal and the reluctant medium she enlists, Ren, to help mend her relationships, Nadi Reed Perez eschews some of the trappings of other ghost-lit-fic (usually a secret murder or mysterious happening) in digging deep into thorny emotional territory and the grief-laden questions that follow the passing of a loved one. The Afterlife of Mal Caldera is not a light read by any means, but for the right reader, might be the one that they need at that time.
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The Afterlife of Mal Caldera isn’t always divine, but it is a largely enjoyable character study of a selfish, flawed, deeply relatable woman who the reader will come to love by the end of the story. Reed Perez is a talented scribe and if they continue to create heartfelt, poignant tales like this, they’ll find themselves a devoted niche of readers ready to follow them to hell and back (pun very much intended).
The Afterlife of Mal Caldera is out on 11th June from Titan Books.
