![]() ![]() Jessa found his body in the shop she works at every day, passed down to her from him, and originally from his own father. Jessa-Lynn, called Jessa by most, is a Floridian taxidermist in her 30s whose father has recently died by suicide. But lest you cringe at what sounds like a difficult read, this isn't a depressing book: it's darkly funny, both macabre and irreverent, and its narrator is so real that every time I stopped reading the book, I felt a tiny pull at the back of my mind, as if I'd left a good friend in the middle of a conversation. It's in this precarious emotional space that Kristen Arnett's debut novel, Mostly Dead Things, is set. Yet life goes on, no matter how absent from it a mourner may feel. ![]() ![]() Grief can be a kind of deadening, a latching onto the past in order to fill in the gaps left by the person who has died or exited our lives. When I try to recall what mourning feels like - the immediate aftermath of a death, I mean, the days and weeks, and months that follow - I can only grasp the edges of memories. ![]() Your purchase helps support NPR programming. Close overlay Buy Featured Book Title Mostly Dead Things Author Kristen Arnett ![]()
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