Surreal Humor / Romance

Beyond Henry

2017

Genre: Voice-driven literary fiction

Sub-Genres: Existential romance / metaphysical coda / stunning epilogue

After all the adventures, desires, longing, and life experiences end, who was Henry... and who will he become after that?

Synopsis: Beyond Henry

— Life As Transformation

Author: Gary Marks

Beyond Henry is a philosophical novella that begins as a quirky love story. But its final chapters turn the entire book into something much stranger.

The story opens with a person experiencing the birth of a beautiful relationship, and ends with the birth of the same person becoming... someone else.

Henry is charming. He loves boats. He hates where he lives. He considers escaping day-to-day life by sailing straight out to sea. Then Valerie comes into his life, and the book becomes far more grounded.

Valerie speaks to Henry from a place so clear and intense it becomes disarming. Their relationship doesn’t only unfold as a romance, it unfolds as a constant transformation—two people changing each other’s inner world, disconnecting, reconnecting.

The chapters of the book are shocking, while strangely tender.

The name of a newborn child is not chosen at random. In fact, after you read the book's last words, consider what just happened... and to whom.