text: I didn't expect to "like" this book after reading the first 30 of 196 pages. The graphic detail used to describe a murder and the early decomposition of two dead bodies made me wonder where in the heck this story could go. And, more importantly, why would I want to read it! Where does the story go?
  
  It's a wandering timetable. We know the two main characters, Joseph and Celice, both professors of zoology married for 30 years, are dead and the forward movement not only includes their ongoing decay, but also their eventual discovery by police dogs and the introduction of their grown daughter, Syl, as she copes with her knowledge of their death. It also goes back to when they first met, as students sharing a study house at the shore. They are an unlikely pair, and yet, they come together through mutual attraction and what turns out to be a shared tragic experience, and live--at least according to their estranged daughter--an unremarkable life. The timetable further allows the reader to relive the last day of their lives, hour by hour, from the murder back to the moment they awoke and decided to spend the day together at the very shore where they'd met some 30 years earlier. The layout of the story was brilliant, and not in the least bit confusing. 
  
  The language (British English) is both lofty and gritty--probably not unlike Joseph and Celice. Some of the thoughtful insights about life and death are very, very poignant. For example, when Syl contemplates the loss of her parents:
  
  "... Her gene supplies had closed shop. Their daughter was the next in line. She could not duck out of the queue. So she should not waste her time in this black universe. The world's small, breathing denizens, its quaking congregations and its stargazers, were fools to sacrifice the flaring briefness of their lives in hopes of paradise or fears of hell. No one transcends. There is no future and no past. There is no remedy for death--or birth--except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall."
  
  I thought it was a very elegant way of illustrating both the fact that life always goes marching on, and the importance of our obligation to the dead (and dying) that we live life well. The title and thesis of the book are one and the same: "Being Dead." Highly recommend.
  
  From the author of "A Line Between Friends," McKenna Publishing Group
  