INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A 2025 NPR "Books We Love" Pick
USA Today April 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)

An Indie Next & LibraryReads Pick
Winner of the AudioFiles Earphones Award

The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life's story.

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 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
A 2025 NPR “Books We Love” Pick
USA Today April 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)

An Indie Next & LibraryReads Pick
Winner of the AudioFiles Earphones Award

The Office meets Six Feet Under meets About a Boy in this coming-of-middle-age tale about having a second chance to write your life’s story.

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.