Rating: 
Summary: Literary departure from the truth
Review: I was astonished at how Fenimore could foist such neurotic poison upon society. To claim to be dead when no life-support or hospitalization was needed is ridiculous. I commend her writing skills, as she is clearly a literary artist. However, her material is wrought with ignorance, mysticism, pretensions, and utter self-centric neurosis. Beyond the Darkness is a blatant forgery crafted by Fenimore in a feeble attempt to not only rationalize the profound confusion in her life, but to acquit and expiate herself of the selfish mistakes she has made with her husband and children. Beyond the Darkness is worth exploring simply because of the number of near-death experiences people claim to have. However, it should be approached with a great deal of skepticism, common sense, and reasoning to discern the true underlying sources and reasons to her claims.
Rating:
Summary: Go to hell? Don't bother
Review: I was so excited when I first heard about this book--a woman who has a near-death experience, but because she's tried to commit suicide, instead of a glimpse of eternal bliss she goes to HELL! I wondered if she actually saw devils with pitchforks, or Cerebus guarding the Styx. But what happens is she goes through a tunnel, loses her breasts, and ends up in what looks like a crappy old bedroom with a bunch of other suicides (mostly teenagers), while a woman in a beehive talks about what a lot of problems she's got. Then Jesus starts chewing her out (the author, not the woman with the beehive) for killing herself and tells her what a jerk she's been for trying to take the easy way out. Then she comes back to life feeling much better and determined not to listen to rock and roll anymore, because she realizes now it's a Satanic plot. I cannot believe that the creator of the universe would be so petty as to punish pop music fans by locking them in a bedroom full of bad hairdos for all eternity. I give this book no credence whatsoever.
Rating: 
Summary: A blinding journey to the dark side of the death experience
Review: In this current age of medical technology, returning from clinical death is not uncommon. Neither are the stories about what happens there. But for a few of us, death is not such a wonderful experience. While many authors tell of the delights of heaven, few talk about the loneliness of hell that, unfortunatly, is just as real. For some of us, a loving pat, saying "it isn't your time." is not enough. But the harsh image of eternal loneliness is a clear sign that death isn't always an escape, but a beginning of something even worse than the pain of living. Angie Fenimore makes this quite clear with her vivid descriptions an stark imagery that outlines a very dark future for those who die by there own hand.
Rating:
Summary: Is it hell that burns?
Review: It is amazing to me that in the light of such extraordinary information we continue manipulating our perceptions according to a hackneyed Christian outlook. Do the author's experiences really give her, or us, the right to assert that such ¨places¨ as heaven and hell are real? How much of this understanding is attributable to the experience and how much is post-experiential rationalisation - in other words, sheer fiction? The time is coming when we will have to treat such experiences seriously, instead of docketing them into codes. Christianity, hmm. South American shamans spoke of an interim region between this world and the next, where souls could get stuck in the transition, whereupon they would scream out for help to practically anyone who passed, including the shaman. Think. Why should the author's experience confirm the Christian worldview instead of this one?
Rating: 
Summary: A Powerful NDE Account, but Appreciated with Skepticism
Review: Let me first start off by saying that NDE accounts are not proof of a life-after-death existence. There is no way that such experiences can be substantiated or verified - they are simply anecdotal evidence. That being said, of all the NDE accounts that I have read, this is one of the most powerful. Here is an account of a young woman who was raised in a family with lots of problems, the outstanding ones being: 1) An alcoholic father, 2) a mother who abandoned the family, 3) an emotionally-abusive and suicidal step-mother, and 4) childhood sexual abuse by unspecified persons (which she stated was too horrible to go into details about). After Angie's very unhappy childhood, she got married to a military officer, whom she traveled around with from Air Force Base to Air Force Base. During her marriage and the rearing of her young children, the horrors of her childhood, and especially the ghastly childhood sexual abuse that she was subjected to, came back to haunt her, especially at certain times of the year that she described as "the cycle". Things finally came to a head one day while the couple were stationed on Okinawa. Angie attempted suicide by swallowing a bottle of prescription medication and whatever else was involved to poison herself. Though she wished to enter the Light after death, instead she found herself in a realm of darkness, characterized by unimaginable fear and a total sense of disconnection and aloneness. She was among other suicides, who were in a stupor and incapable of responding to any of her queries, as they were completely self-absorbed in whatever it was that drove themselves to end their lives. She found herself next to a man who appeared to be sixty years old and dresses in the style one would expect to see around the time Jesus lived on Earth. This man was completely dead, not even radiating negative thoughts. It was at this point that Angie realized that all hope had died in this real of darkness. She then heard a powerful voice rebuking her for taking her life, and she found herself in the presence of God. From the way she described it, I suspect that the voice of God was communicated telepathically, as opposed to our normal way of communicating via sound waves. This is probably so because of the fact that the others on the dark plane didn't respond to God's voice. God cut to the chase and didn't mince words; He told her point-blank that suicide is not an option, that the suffering that she would experience in this dark realm would be far greater than what she suffered through in life. Yet, thanks to the saving grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, she was redeemed from hell. As someone coming from a Christian perspective, I do question why it was that she saw God the Father before seeing His Son, for Jesus does state in scripture that He is "the Truth, the Way, and the Life", and that no one can go to the Father but through Him. On the other hand, God the Father was in the realm of Light and Angie was in the realm of Darkness throughout the NDE, so perhaps there is no scriptural violation here. Another facet of her experience that doesn't jive with the traditional Christian perspective is the post-NDE revelation that she co-authored her life with God. I question this, for there is nothing in scripture that I'm aware of that states explicitly that we have a spiritual pre-existence; yes, in Jeremiah 1:5 we have the passage "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you...". Now this passage can be interpreted in a number of ways, though I am aware that the Mormons do interpret this passage to mean spiritual pre-existence, and Angie had exposure to the Mormon church. (NOTE: This is not meant to be an attack on Mormon beliefs, but just pointing out how Angie's experiences may have been influenced. Also, the myriad other interpretation of Jeremiah 1:5 are beyond the scope of this review.) As for me personally, I believe that we all came into existence upon conception in the womb, for we are not eternal spirits; I believe that God created us as mortals who die, and don't live forever, and any after-life existence would be a gift given by His grace. In closing, I find Angie's NDE account to be very powerful, though I perceive some scriptural flaws. There is no way to substantiate her experiences, and I remain the skeptic about any such things I read, intriguing as they may be. As I stated at the beginning, NDE's are just anecdotes, and anyone can concoct a good story. I question how close she really was to death, given that she didn't get any medical attention. Whether she made-up this story (which I doubt), or whether this was based upon some vision (probably drug-induced), it was expressed in extremely powerful prose, and I guess I was drawn to the sincerity expressed therein. Nevertheless, my sympathies and prayers go out to her, and in the end, what is most important is if this experience (or whatever she went through) changed Angie's life for the better, and that she no longer desires suicide as the way out.
Rating:
Summary: Whatever
Review: Nothing but cotton-candy mind-control. So suicides go straight to "hell", huh? What a cruel, insenstive LIE to dump on the loved ones and family members of suicide victims. I got news for you, there IS no "hell", it is all just a big scare-tactic made up thousands of years ago to keep people in line, to make them behave. So have fun believeing in your mean magical devil. It ain't true.
Rating:
Summary: Whatever
Review: Nothing but cotton-candy mind-control. So suicides go straight to "hell", huh? What a cruel, insenstive LIE to dump on the loved ones and family members of suicide victims. I got news for you, there IS no "hell", it is all just a big scare-tactic made up thousands of years ago to keep people in line, to make them behave. So have fun believeing in your mean magical devil. It ain't true.
Rating: 
Summary: Darkness and Light
Review: Our heroine in this first person near death account is a woman raised by an alcoholic father and a suicidal step mother. Her challenge in life is not to imitate them and she misses her cue and winds up floating around in the darkness of the netherworld encountering what are apparently others like herself. A meeting with God is described with echoes of her Baptist upbringing: "God looked to me like an old man without wrinkles and with a young, strong body. His shoulders were broad, and His chest was full. His arms were strong, and the muscles well defined. His chiseled facial structure was strong and perfect, softened by a neat white beard." There you have it. He asked if this was what she wanted and then asked her "Don't you know that this is the worst thing you could have done?" As a young mother she was reminded how her absense would affect her family. Then she got to meet Christ and so on. It is hard to pass judgement on stories like this. Each new case is going to have differences from those that have gone before of which there are thousands at this point. The cultural perspective is Christian as would be expected here. We get to read a minilecture about Satan, antitruth and the second coming of Christ, but as Raymond Moody has pointed out ministers who have had NDEs come back amazed that God was not interested in their theology, just their service to their fellow man. I am sure that it was very therapeutic for the author to share her experiences with us, but from a useful information standpoint, there are many other books which far surpass this one in richness of detail. Nonetheless it is a quick and easy read taken in perspective and largely a reinforcement of basic spiritual truths shared across many traditions.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: This book is just amazing. Her life, the things that she went through as she was growing up, made me just cry. It is incredible. You can see why God had mercy on her and let her come back. I HIGHLY recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Different Perspective 4 Years Later
Review: To Misskitti and anyone else I may have offended in the review titled "Final Thoughts on Suicide" dated April 22nd, 2000: I extend my sincere apologies (I'm "tleopold"). I got caught-up in "Millenium Fever" (due to my own mental illness) and was almost, but not quite, a fundamentalist Christian. First off, I reconnected with my Jewishness and have thus ditched any Christian beliefs that I previously held. Beyond that, I suffered a suicidal depression a couple of years ago that ultimately resulted in my hanging myself in my apartment. I was extremely lucky that the knot (noose) I tied around my neck was loose enough that I landed on the kitchen floor and regained consciousness after being unconscious for several minutes, otherwise I would have been dead. Without further ado, I will say this: There is no judgemental God and there is no hell, except for all the hells we humans create right here, right now in this world. This book makes for an entertaining read, but I believe that its nothing more than a drug-induced hallucination. And so once again, I apologize for having appeared judgemental four years ago. I no longer believe in Christianity, and am proud to be a Jew!!!
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