INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER · One of NPR's Book We Love 2025 · A Gotham Book Prize Finalist · An Indie Next & LibraryReads Pick · AudioFiles Earphones Award Winner · Library Journal | Audio "Editor's Picks of the Year" · 2026 Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List Pick

"Razor-sharp, darkly comedic, and emotionally piercing. With the satirical bite of Richard Russo's Straight Man, the introspection of Fredrik Backman's A Man Called Ove, and the reinvention of Andrew Sean Greer's Less, Kenney's vivid prose transforms the mundane into unexpected hilarity."
-Booklist (starred review)

Obituary writer Bud Stanley isn't really living his best life. He's fallen into a funk after a divorce. (She left him for another man, who, in fairness, was far more interesting.) He's not doing his job well. He's given up on dating. And he's about to be fired for accidentally publishing his own obituary one mildly drunken night (though technically the company can't legally fire a dead person).

As Bud awaits his fate at work, he does the only logical thing: He goes to the wakes and funerals of total strangers to learn how to live again.

Autorentext

John Kenney is the bestselling author of I See You've Called in Dead, as well as two novels and four books of poetry, including Talk to Me, Love Poems for Married People, Love Poems for People with Children, and Love Poems for Anxious People. His first novel, Truth In Advertising, won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker magazine's Shouts & Murmurs column. He lives in Larchmont, New York, with his wife, Lissa, a therapist, and two children, whose names currently escape him.

Klappentext

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER · One of NPR’s Book We Love 2025 · A Gotham Book Prize Finalist · An Indie Next & LibraryReads Pick · AudioFiles Earphones Award Winner · Library Journal | Audio "Editor's Picks of the Year” · 2026 Lariat Adult Fiction Reading List Pick

"Razor-sharp, darkly comedic, and emotionally piercing. With the satirical bite of Richard Russo’s Straight Man, the introspection of Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove, and the reinvention of Andrew Sean Greer's Less, Kenney’s vivid prose transforms the mundane into unexpected hilarity."
—Booklist (starred review)

Obituary writer Bud Stanley isn’t really living his best life. He’s fallen into a funk after a divorce. (She left him for another man, who, in fairness, was far more interesting.) He’s not doing his job well. He’s given up on dating. And he’s about to be fired for accidentally publishing his own obituary one mildly drunken night (though technically the company can’t legally fire a dead person).

As Bud awaits his fate at work, he does the only logical thing: He goes to the wakes and funerals of total strangers to learn how to live again.