The Joy of Funerals: A Novel in Stories - Hardcover

Strauss, Alix

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312309171 ISBN 13: 9780312309176

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2003

Synopsis

Begun as a Lives column in the New York Times Magazine, The Joy of Funerals is a riveting look into the disturbing lives of nine young women, each willing to take drastic measures and demonstrate extreme behavior to fill the voids created by longing and loneliness. The first eight face death differently, from Leslie, who grieves for her dead husband by having random sex with mourners she finds at a cemetery, to the unnamed woman who can't stop believing that her recently deceased date was perhaps the perfect man. The ninth woman, Nina, ties them all together by attending these funerals in her search to bond with others. Throughout this dazzling collection, Strauss, with her mordant humor reminiscent of "Six Feet Under," and penetrating voice, explores how our most basic need for connection shapes and defines us.

About this title

About the Author:

Alix Strauss is a lifestyle trend writer whose articles have appeared in The New York Times and many other periodicals. The Joy of Funerals is her first novel. She lives in New York City.

From Booklist:

The young New York women featured in the first eight stories of this debut collection are strange and solitary creatures, all facing death in some form and almost interchangeable in their quirky loneliness. Leslie has sex with strangers at the cemetery where her husband is buried, Helen steals the ashes of her dead therapist, Karen stakes out a diner in hopes of finding her lover's killer. These vignettes and others lead into the title story, the longest in the collection, which features yet another lonely young woman who has passed through the lives of the other narrators by way of the funerals of their loved ones. Posing as a friend of the deceased and insinuating herself into the lives of the mourners, she tries in vain to feel needed, wanted, loved. This is chick-lit for the melancholy--the dark humor throughout does little to blunt the aching sadness of these women struggling to find their places in the world. Carrie Bissey
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0312309171
• ISBN 13: 9780312309176
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 259