If you’ve read some of my blogs before you may remember me as the girl who was scared while reading the shrouded woman because of her constant worry of death…yup you could imagine my joy reading this book, I’m joking, I actually really enjoyed this book, even with the constant talk about death (maybe I’ve accepted fate??? Who knows), Before I get into my opinion on this book I wanted to relate it to another book that I’ve read called “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” by V.E Schwab, It’s a pretty popular book so some of you may have read it, but it’s special to me because it was the first book I read, during the blazing Vancouver summer of 2021, that got me hooked into reading, One of the first books in a long time that I had truly enjoyed, It’s a Fantasy Fiction/ Historical Fiction and I felt it was similar to “Death with Interruptions” by José Saramago, it speaks a lot about memory and a similar “what would happen if…” story that makes you reflect on how things are, maybe not super similar but I got the same vibe, Now as I said before I really enjoyed this novel, “what would happen if everyone in one area just stopped dying one day?” is essentially the simple summary, out of all the novels we’ve read so far this one raised the most questions for me, One of my first thoughts about this was what would happen to the crimes that are punishable by death? Would people commit these crimes with knowing they cant be punished by death? Or would they even be able to commit the crime as most crimes that are punishable by death are murders? There are so many things brough up in this book that I didn’t even think about, like how immortality would effect politics, jobs like funeral workers, healthcare workers (which in honesty it sounded like their situation of the hospitals getting filled up is similar to our own situations today, at least headed in that direction), how it effects religion, and even the suffering of those about to face death described, I also think the choice to turn death into a female personification was an interesting choice, to anthropomorphize death and give her feelings of remorse for the decision to make everyone immortal, I feel the lesson from this book is to not get in the way of death and it’s plans, anyways I really did enjoy this book and am excited to discuss it further,
It also seems I forgot how to use a period, oops, how very Saramago of me.
My question to you is how would you spend you pre-death week?
“…the choice to turn death into a female personification was an interesting choice, to anthropomorphize death and give her feelings of remorse…“ Yes, I must say that it is an interesting (fictional) experiment to give a variety of feelings and reactions to the character-death. Perhaps for me the most striking thing has been the feeling of curiosity that the “administrative” contingency provokes in the character. We know little about other “deaths” (the one involving animals, for example) and that leaves us with even more questions.
Hi Avery! Thank you for the book recommendation, I’ll definitely read it! To answer your question I think I would honestly eat the food I love the whole week and spend it with my loved ones. Great blog post!
Hi Avery! You mentioning how you surprisingly liked this book even though the main plot point was death, makes me think back to the discussion we had regarding ‘money to burn’ and how sometimes we become overtly intrigued by themes such as death and murder. I’ve heard about ‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’ but never actually read it, maybe I’ll give it a go now that you’ve recommended it.