"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 for April
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.
John Kenney's latest novel successfully walks a tightrope between dark humor and genuine warmth, and Sean Patrick Hopkins's narration provides the necessary balance. Bud Stanley is a newspaper writer who one night drunkenly writes and publishes his own obituary, setting in motion a grimly amusing series of events. Hopkins's even tone perfectly conveys Bud's sarcastic wit, as well as the thoughtful
