I See You've Called in Dead

 

Declared dead by HR. Forced to figure out how to actually live.

I See You've Called in Dead made me laugh out loud and then cry actual tears sometimes within the same paragraph.

An obituary writer gets drunk, accidentally publishes his own obituary, and suddenly the company’s HR system thinks he’s dead. Dead people can’t be fired. So now what?

Bud Stanley writes obituaries for a living. He’s depressed, lonely, and still not over his divorce. One night he has too much to drink and does something spectacularly ill-advised. He writes and posts his own obituary to his newspaper’s online portal. By morning, the whole world thinks he’s dead.

His company’s system now has him listed as deceased, and you can’t legally fire a dead man. So Bud is suspended, unmoored, and left to figure out what to do with himself.

What he does is start showing up to the wakes and funerals of total strangers.

He meets Clara, a woman who has been doing this for years. Watching how people grieve and remember the people they loved has taught her how to actually live. Bud starts going too, and at each service, he hears stories about the deceased from the people who loved them. Slowly, something starts to shift.

His best friend Tim is one of the best characters I’ve encountered in a long time. Paralyzed in an accident as a young man, Tim fought through the grief and rage of that and came out the other side full of life, art, music, and deep friendship. He becomes the person who gently drags Bud back into the world.

This is a book about grief and loss that is also genuinely funny. Walking that line without losing either side is incredibly hard to do, and John Kenney does it beautifully. Narrator Sean Patrick Hopkins is perfectly cast. His deadpan delivery makes the humor land even perfectly, and he handles the emotional moments with real care.

This was my book club’s April pick, and every single person in the group loved it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ I strongly recommend it.

Fans of Backman’s A Man Called Ove will feel right at home with Bud Stanley. Here’s my review. 

About the Author

John Kenney is the New York Times bestselling author of the humorous poetry collections Love Poems for Married People, Love Poems for People with Children, and Love Poems for Anxious People, and the novels Talk to Me and Truth in Advertising, which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor. He has worked for many years as a copywriter. He has also been a contributor to The New Yorker since 1999. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

 To learn more about John Kenney and his other books, visit his website.