A reviewer who "gets it"

Authors know there are reviewers who "get" a story and then there are those who don't. This review completely "gets" my story that was published in Issue No. 2 of Sci-Phi Journal, "On the Spiritual Plain".

If you don't want to follow the link, here are his pertinent comments:

"Another story, among several that impressed me, was Lou Antonelli’s “On the Spiritual Plain” (issue 2), about a planet on which, because of its peculiar electro-magnetic characteristics, one’s ghost (soul ? spirit?) becomes visible after death. Here the protagonist is a Methodist minister who first encounters the phenomenon when a workman is killed in an accident, and the ghost visits him. The story poses more questions than it attempts to answer, as the Methodist minister with the help of an alien “shaman,” for want of a better word, shepherds “Joe McDonald’s” soul to a place where it can leave the planet and “dissipate.” The story does not attempt to make a statement about the afterlife, but is a poetic meditation on of the process of dealing with death. All of the stories have a “Food for Thought” section at the end, which draws one’s attention to the philosophical issues involved. I have not decided yet whether these are more limiting than helpful. A good story speaks for itself in ways which only stories can speak. I found this story more evocative than the “Food for Thought” section that followed."

Note: The italics are mine. I realize that at my age (I turned 58 on Jan. 6), this is something more on my mind than ever - especially since I have already outlived my best friend in college and my best friend in high school. These were two of the finest people I ever knew.