Fall for the Book

Three novels explore the allure of death when life has become too much, and the desire to keep on living. In Katharine Weber’s Still Life With Monkey, a successful architect becomes severely paralyzed after a car wreck. In order to revitalize him, his wife brings home a highly trained helper monkey named Ottoline, whose funny Nutella-gobbling ways bring brightness back to his life. Tayari Jones calls it “a brilliantly crafted novel, brimming with heart.” Jacob M. Appel’s novel Millard Salter’s Last Day follows the book’s namesake on his journey to tie up loose ends with his estranged family. When it comes to Delilah, the widow whom he’s fallen in love with, the approaching end becomes a little more complicated. In Thomas Pierce’s novel The Afterlives, when Jim Byrd dies and is revived without ever catching a glimpse of lights or angels, he wonders if there’s an afterlife. When a ghost shows up, Jim and his wife employ holograms, psychics, messages from the beyond, trying to answer their question.