The Joy of Funerals

<p><span style=color: rgba(34 34 34 1)>20th Anniversary Edition</span></p><p><br></p><p>From the very first page readers are drawn into the strange often humorous world where nine women grapple with sex power love and death. Meet a widow who lusts...a daughter who aches...a lover who obsesses...a shopaholic who hungers... a daredevil who desires...a single woman who longs...an outsider who hopes...an artist who craves...and a funeral-junkie who needs. These are the women who inhabit the eerily honest often heartbreaking world Alix Strauss has created in <em>The Joy of Funerals.</em></p><p><br></p><p>Throughout this powerful and provocative collection these characters explore the basic need for human connection while seeking to understand themselves better. It is the 'where do I belong' and the 'how do I fit in' that these sad bright and amazingly strong women seek to answer.</p><p><br></p><p>In Recovering Larry a woman mourns for her dead husband by having sex with grieving men. In Shrinking Away a woman pays a daring shiva call on her psychiatrist's widow. Swimming Without Annette explores a woman's obsession with her wife's killer while Still Life peers into the life of a pregnant artist who wishes to paint herself out of a bad marriage and into a prettier world. In Post-Dated a single woman wonders if her recently defunct date was perhaps the perfect man.</p><p><br></p><p>Read independently these vivid and raw stories stand on their own. When read as a collection they are anchored together by the novella The Joy of Funerals which follows the life of Nina a lonely single thirty-something woman who attends the funerals of the deceased characters in the previous stories.</p><p><br></p><p>Begun as an essay in the <em>Lives</em> column of <em>The New York Times</em> <em>magazine</em> <em>The Joy of Funerals</em> is written with raw wit mordant humor and a uniquely penetrating voice as Strauss turns the spotlight on the unattractive subjects of loss grief and loneliness.</p><p><br></p><p><em style=color: rgba(29 34 40 1)>The Joy of Funerals</em><span style=color: rgba(29 34 40 1)> is an Ingram Award winner and was named Best Debut Novel by </span><em style=color: rgba(29 34 40 1)>The New York Resident</em><span style=color: rgba(29 34 40 1)>.</span></p>