I See You’ve Called in Dead
by John Kenney

My rating: 2.5 / 5
Genre: Contemporary fiction

After a failed blind date, obituary writer Bud Stanley gets drunk and publishes an outlandish, completely fictional obituary…for himself. The company he works for suspends him and then finds out they can’t fire him, because the system thinks he’s dead. Meanwhile, Bud starts to attend funerals of strangers, prompted by an intriguing young woman who suggests that it might help him learn how to live.

I requested this book on NetGalley because it was listed as humor/satire. Between that and the premise, I thought it would be somewhat lighthearted (or at least darkly humorous) and involve a lot more of what would happen in a situation where his job wanted to fire him but couldn’t. Neither of these things is true. There are a few witty or snarky comments here and there, and I did note at least one scene with satire, but overall, the book is mostly slow and depressing. And his job is so in the background that he only goes there a few times throughout the book. I know that I am the absolutely wrong audience for this, though, so I am not going to spend a lot of time describing what I didn’t like about it. Bud is reeling from a nasty divorce (his wife cheated on him in a particularly bad way), which explains his mental state. However, he’s surrounded by pretty good friends who are giving him some great advice. Yet he mostly just floats through life, not really taking charge at all. His mom died when he was a teenager, which is also something he doesn’t seem to have fully processed and dealt with, even though he went to therapy for a while. Maybe he stopped too soon.

The book is full of introspection and discussion about deep topics, during which Bud often responds flippantly and makes me want to smack him. There’s also a lot of description, which I tended to skim. Overall, the book is about someone halfheartedly trying to find the meaning to life, so if that interests you, you might like this book a lot more than I did. I know, though, that looking for the meaning of life without God (not that there’s never any mention of God in this book, but He certainly isn’t seen as the answer to Bud’s problems) is completely pointless. And, though there were a few decent moments, “pointless” pretty well sums up how this book felt to me.

Thank you to Netgalley and Zibby Publishing for providing me a copy of this book to review.

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