Life After Death

Susan Compo's fiction vividly depicts the punk and Goth underground scenes in London and Los Angeles in the 1980s. As participant and observer, she was immersed in the '80s music and fashion worlds of both cities, and she writes about them with wit and compassion but also brutal honesty, capturing the exhilaration and despair of the times, the desires and foibles of its protagonists. In every respect Compo is a worthy heir to those great satirists of the prewar demimonde, Dorothy Parker and Dawn Powell, and we're proud to reissue her story collections, Life After Death and Malingering, and her novel, Pretty Things, in the Visible Spectrum series. LIFE AFTER DEATH, Compo's debut collection from 1990, offers a deep dive into the subcultures of Los Angeles and London in the 1980s as glam turned to punk and goth. She captures the lives of aspiring musicians, scenesters, and obsessive fans-lives in which reality is a constant threat to cherished illusions, and death, while never far away, is sometimes not the end of the story.