Death & Dying | Book Chatter

Days of Awe
By Lauren Fox
Knopf Publishing Group, Hardcover, 9780307268129, August 2015, 272pp.

The Short of It:

Life goes on even when you feel like it shouldn’t.

The Rest of It:

I read this one far too long ago to remember all of the wonderful details but I STILL remember how I felt while reading it and I remember having all kinds of love for it.

The story is simple but the characters and the way they are woven into each other’s lives, are not. The story opens with the funeral of Isabel Moore’s best friend, Josie. Isabel and Josie, both middle school teachers and as close as friends can be, have done everything together so when Josie is killed in a car accident, Isabel’s world is turned upside down.

Isabel’s grief is all-consuming and yet, on the outside it’s not terribly apparent just how bad off she is. Her husband can’t deal with her anymore and can’t understand why she is unable to move on from this. But inside, she’s quietly falling apart. Especially when she learns that Josie’s life was not picture perfect either.

I really enjoyed this novel. I enjoyed it because it perfectly captured that moment of grief where you can’t figure out how to live. The presence of Josie is everywhere for Isabel and she’s stuck between mourning her and not liking her for the things she did prior to her death. The events leading up to her death force Isabel to question if she really knew her friend at all. How does one move on from this?

There is a slight meandering quality to the story but it felt right to me. When you lose a loved one, you find yourself floating through life and the narration has that same feel. Isabel is just floating along, trying to make sense of her loss and I must say, her pain is quite evident and raw and just so tangible. The author did a really good job of capturing all that angst. I highly recommend it.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

Pet Sematary
By Stephen King
(Pocket Books, Mass Market Paperback, 9780743412278, 2001, 576pp.)

The Short of It:

Probably one of King’s best.

The Rest of It:

In my late teens, early twenties, I somehow managed to read Pet Sematary twice. I think I read it a second time, right before the movie came out. I remember it being appropriately scary but not overly so. To compare, IT, to this day, is still his scariest book ever but anytime death is involved and you try to change things, you are really grabbing the bull by the horns and things just can’t go well when you try to do that with death. Trust me.

After Louis Creed accepts a position as a university doctor, he and his wife Rachel buy a house in the country and look forward to raising their two small children, Ellie and Gage, in the beauty of God’s kingdom. Except, there is a pesky road that is the main through-way for trucks getting from point A to point B. Across the way, are their elderly neighbors, the Crandalls and oh, let’s not forget the Pet Sematary, which is really the smaller part of an Indian burial ground and which just so happens to be on their property.

Indian burial ground. Yep.

As you can probably guess, that busy road becomes a very important part of the story, as does the Pet Sematary, which is spelled that way because that is how a child chose to spell it years and years ago. The story reads quickly, because once you get to a certain point, you really can’t stop reading as you must know how it all turns out.

As you may recall above, I didn’t think the book was overly scary when I read it in my twenties but that was before kids. Reading it recently, I couldn’t help but flashback to those times when my kids hurt themselves or how afraid I was of hurting them accidentally. Really, just recognizing how fragile they were. Well, the experience of parenthood adds some additional terror to the mix. For sure.

I read this for the #gangstercats read-along so I definitely had the support of others, which always makes reading a book like this a lot more fun. Plus, we got party favors too! There’s nothing like a good King discussion to bring people together. There was some interest in maybe watching the movie while live tweeting, so if that happens, you’ll hear about it soon.