Everyone In This Room will Someday be Dead

Everyone In This Room will Someday be Dead - Emily Austin

Description

Meet Gilda. She cannot stop thinking about death. Desperate for relief from her anxious mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local church and finds herself abruptly hired to replace the deceased receptionist Grace. It's not the most obvious job - she's queer and an atheist for starters - and so in between trying to learn mass, hiding her new maybe-girlfriend and conducting an amateur investigation into Grace's death, Gilda must avoid revealing the truth of her mortifying existence.

A blend of warmth, deadpan humour, and pitch-perfect observations about the human condition, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is a crackling exploration of what it takes to stay afloat in a world where your expiration - and the expiration of those you love - is the only certainty.

Review

This novel deals with a character who has extreme anxiety/depression - it may not be for someone who can sometimes feel like this themselves.

Took me a while to get used to the depressing outpouring onto the page, skipping from one time line to another, one subject to another. Without warning hurtle into the unknown. Gradually I began to read it at speed and that seemed to help with the randomness of the story.

Dead pan comedy it does have and I did laugh out loud a couple of times. But in the main it is a bit depressing to be honest. I did get to quite like Gilda especially when she went on a few dates with a man she was set up with out of kindness. Gilda being a lesbian meant it was never really going to work out for her especially as she was already seeing someone. Most of the comedy does come from Gilda being too nice or inept most of the time to actually say what she means, or tell the truth, leading her to be out of her depth in most situations.

I was hoping for more of a detective slant to the book from the book blurb.

I'm giving this book 3 out of 5 stars. My thanks to netgalley for the ARC to review.

Comments

No One Would Do What The Lamberts Have Done - Sophie Hannah

Description The twistiest murder mystery you are ever likely to read? A story about a family that does the unthinkable in order to save the life of one of its beloved members? Both? Or something else altogether? You'll have to read until the very last word in order to find out… You think it will never happen to you: the ring of the bell, the policeman on the doorstep. What he says traps you in a nightmare that starts with the words, 'I'm afraid…' Sally Lambert is also afraid, and desperate enough to consider the unthinkable. Is it really, definitely, impossible to escape from this horror? Maybe not. There's always something you can do, right? Of course, no one would ever do this particular something – except the Lamberts, who might have to. No one has ever gone this far. Until Sally decides that the Lamberts will… 'An incident involving a dog in a small village escalates to an all-out conflict, turning neighbour against neighbour, and culminating in murder. Bu...

The Dilemmas of Work Women - Fumio Yamamoto

Description The classic Japanese bestseller published in English for the very first time - a darkly funny and relatable book portraying the lives of five women 'Witty, wise and thought-provoking' Cecelia Ahern 'Crackles and pops with humour, empathy and intelligence' Lisa Owens, author of Not Working 'So brilliantly written that I kept trying to memorise sentences in order to repeat them to people later' Roxy Dunn, author of As Young as This Izumi needs to get a job. Haruka needs to stop talking about how she once had cancer. Katō needs to get through a shift at the convenience store without being harassed. Mito needs to break up with her boyfriend - or marry him. Sumie just needs somewhere to live. In this classic Japanese bestseller, published in English twenty-five years after it took Japan by storm, the lives of five ordinary women are depicted with irresistible humour and searing emotional insight. Review A collection of short ...

The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins

Description THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. YOU DON'T KNOW HER. BUT SHE KNOWS YOU. Rear Window meets Gone Girl , in this exceptional and startling psychological thriller Review I must be one of the last people to read this book. I did apply for a review copy but unfortunately wasn't successful. I then waited for the book to come down in price which it didn't - so I decided I would buy it and read it straight away! I'm sure it will be a film and before anyone gives away what happens I felt I really needed to get it read, so it jumped the TBR queue. There is not much plot outline from the publisher as you can see in the description above, so there wasn't a lot to go on when I began to read the book. First of all the book jumps around date wise - past and present and also between the main characters. I did have a little trouble remembering who was who and which time frame we were in - but that soon settled down. I also had to re-read the beginning because I th...

BOOKSIMO

Search This Blog