"The Household Guide to Dying"

I'm a good ways into this book, and so far, I guess I like it ok. The timeline is fractured, with no real transition between the jumps between past and present, so it feels a bit disjointed. I tend to have trouble with foreign slang as well, but thankfully there isn't a lot of it present in this book.

The story itself is unique, that's for sure, and I appreciate the sometimes humorous look at death, especially being a topic I am so very uncomfortable with myself. I find my heart aching, thinking of the two little girls that will be left behind. My heart can only ache slightly, however, because I am finding that beyond the narrator herself, the characters are not (as of yet) developed at all...you're not given any chance to know, or to like or dislike them. Strangely at this point, we know more about the neighbor than of the husband or daughters.

The lists give some insight as to the things that we all may find unimportant, or even take for granted, that a person may consider when faced with their own mortality, even though the narrator herself admits that some are irrational worries. The random advice column replies seem to serve absolutely no purpose, other than to reaffirm that the narrator is, in fact, an advice columnist by trade. They are occasionally quite witty, but they offer nothing to the story itself that I can see so far. I've seen examples of this in other books, quite frequently as of late, it seems to be a very popular style these days, however I've seen it done much better than this. Jodi Picoult is a good example of how to effectively use this style of writing, in my opinion. In her book, House Rules: A Novel, the narrator is also an advice columnist, but these snippets seem to flow better, and have more to do with the actual story. She does something similar, but with recipes, in Handle with Care: A Novel. However, while these 'columns' don't seem to add to the story (for me at least) they don't detract from it either.

That's all I can stay awake to write this evening. More tomorrow.