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TEACH ME HOW TO DIE

A richly creative meditation on love, mortality, and the possibility of what lies beyond.

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Rauch’s fantastical novel tracks the afterlife of a widowed atheist.

Walter Klein is diagnosed with cancer and makes a principled decision to refuse treatment, essentially issuing himself an imminent death sentence. His wife, Susan, the love of his life, is dead, and with her went his attachment to this world. Walter continues on with his quotidian affairs—he plays in a jazz band, goes to work, and starts to spend time platonically with a woman, Leslie, whose appearance reminds him of Susan. When some repressed rage suddenly surfaces, he goes on a murderous rampage, killing Leslie and raping her, murdering two of his band mates and then his noisy neighbors. Walter wakes, discovering that he died in his sleep. Now he’s to be escorted in the afterlife by a guide named Vincent until the moment he is finally judged. Walter’s paroxysm of violence was part of a cleansing process, a kind of cathartic prelude to his judgment and did not occur in the physical world, but on some spiritual plane. Once evaluated, his judges will determine whether he is permitted to retain his “Right of Choice,” his prerogative to select either permanent nothingness or a sustained fantasy crafted specifically for him. Debut novelist Rauch slowly unfurls the moral cataclysm of Walter’s young life—a violent confrontation with his mother’s abusive boyfriend, an event that engendered an emotional rift between the two. Rauch imaginatively conjures an entire underworld, not only characterized by a different metaphysical reality, but a different set of moral and juridical rules. Rapists are raped as punishment for their past transgressions, and a pedophile who exercised restraint is given guilt-free orgies with children. Walter is the fulcrum of the plot though, a profoundly complex man—loving but also brimming with volatile anger, a simple person who lived a small, precious life but is also capable of real emotional and philosophical depth. The judicial aspect of the novel is fascinating and provocative—a man who kills 157 people is taken to task not for the murders themselves—none of them were innocents—but for the delight he took in the killing. The theological cosmology that emerges—instead of the historical monotheistic god, a being or beings, simply referred to as “The Truth,” preside over all—is both a little opaque and overwrought. Also, there isn’t much of a supporting cast for the protagonist. Walter’s spiritual guide, Vincent, is the only other character fleshed out enough to even approach authentic personhood. The prose, though, is sharp and lively, and Rauch has a talent for the seamless integration of serious philosophical themes and bantering humor. This is an ambitious modernization of Dante’s Inferno, an homage to a literary classic that boldly stakes out its own creative and intellectual territory. Furthermore, Rauch furnishes a thoughtful reflection on the meaning of a life well lived.

A richly creative meditation on love, mortality, and the possibility of what lies beyond.

Pub Date: June 21, 2017

ISBN: 978-0-692-86333-6

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Joseph Rauch Books and Stories

Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2018

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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