Many people wonder what people will say about them at their funeral. Jerome, an ill fated young friar, gets the chance to find out; however for him, death is just the start of something larger. Following his move to the spiritual plane, Jerome is befriended by the ginger tom cat he was kind to in life. After the cat tells the young man that his true name is not Leo but Quant and animals all talk in that world, Quant shows him how to move between worlds.

Jerome now has the opportunity to learn about the world presently inhabits as well as the material one. He sees he was not as essential as the imagined to the little abbey, and to learn that his brothers are more dimensional than he believed. No one is either as good or bad as he perceived in life, nor is his role at the abbey completely finished.

For making complex concepts comprehensible and entertaining to the average reader, this story is to be commended. The simplistic style could be read by a child, but it does not condescend to the audience. However, Christians who adhere to the reformed doctrines or fundamental Christianity will find the universalism advocated by the author to be a weak point in the inspirational aspect of the story.

Brother Jerome was attending the funeral of Brother Aloysius when he slipped, and cracked his head on Aloysius's tombstone and ended up being buried in the same grave that killed him. Understandably Jerome was a little irritated at this turn of events. It wasn't his time to die – honest! Still, there was nothing he could do about it. He was dead. On entering the afterlife Jerome is met by Quantum, a cat who used to inhabit the kitchens of the monastery, who starts to show him the ropes.

This book was fantastic! Robina Williams has written a humorous story without trying too hard to be funny. Often, when an author tries to write something amusing they make the humour so obvious that it is no longer funny. Robina is different. The humour is subtle, eloquent and beautifully written. I read this book during a (delayed) flight from Geneva and got some very strange looks from other passengers as I kept chuckling to myself (the last time I actually laughed at a book was whilst reading Porterhouse Blue by Tom Sharpe).

The characters are superb. When Jerome first enters the afterlife and discovers that he can materialise wherever he wants he is useless. He keeps missing the spot – literally. He materialises inside trees, furniture and random pieces of furniture. It is quite a relief to have a main character that is not perfect and makes mistakes. The overall story is wrapped with a religious message that manages to be heart-warming without feeling puritanical.

Synopsis
The principal characters of this novel are a Catholic friar and a quantum cat. The cat is based on the idea of Schrödinger's Cat, which is potentially both dead and alive.

Brother Jerome has recently had a fatal accident in the cemetery of his friary. In the afterworld he meets up again with his pet cat from the friary and discovers that the creature, far from being a simple domestic pet, is a quantum creature, apparently both dead and alive, for he lives in the friary yet visits the afterworld. With the cat at his side once more, Jerome finds his afterlife suddenly becoming exciting, exhilarating and full of adventure. The cat shows Jerome how he can return to the friary when he wishes. He also journeys with Jerome deeper into the afterworld and helps him to understand the wonders he finds there. The cat's friendship with Jerome goes back a long way for, under another guise, the cat was the lion which befriended St Jerome in the Syrian desert, and Brother Jerome is a reincarnation of the saint, although he does not know it. Albrecht Dürer's painting St Jerome in the Wilderness shows the saint in an attitude of prayer with the lion lying protectively beside him.. In the novel the cat occasionally transforms his green cat's eyes into golden leonine eyes, to tease, baffle or frighten Jerome and his friends. In his true form the cat is a seraph.

The plot of the novel concerns the friary's Father Guardian's fears when a former mistress, accompanied by her daughter, turns up in the parish. He is afraid that she means trouble for him. Is her intention to unmask him, humiliate him in front of his friars and his parish? Or to blackmail him into resuming their relationship? Father Fidelis is a worried man. Fidelis's fears grow when he realises that one of his friars has picked up an incriminating postcard he has dropped -- an illustration of Spencer Stanhope's Thoughts of the Past with a hand-written message on the back.

Underlying this plot is the background story of Jerome and his adventures. Discoveries he makes in the afterworld upset him at first, but the cat helps him to understand that he should rejoice in the unexpected vastness and diversity of God's realm. Jerome begins to get some faint inkling of the cat's angelic nature...

The novel is an attempt to reconcile the Christian world and the world of the classical gods. Jerome finds that the Greek gods never went away but co-exist with his Christian Lord. The God of all Creation has room for all in His house.