Books: Mostly Dead Things By Kristen Arnett (2019)

"One morning, Jessa-Lynn Morton walks into the family taxidermy shop to find that her father has committed suicide, right there on one of the metal tables. Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals. Her brother Milo withdraws, struggling to function. And Brynn, Milo’s wife—and the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with—walks out without a word. As Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, her mother’s art escalates—picture a figure of her dead husband and a stuffed buffalo in an uncomfortably sexual pose—and the Mortons reach a tipping point. For the first time, Jessa has no choice but to learn who these people truly are, and ultimately how she fits alongside them."

With the neon green cover, and pink Flamingo and the stylized font of the title, one can assume (as I did) that Mostly Dead Things was going to be quirky, humorous, though sometimes serious, book about a dysfunctional Florida based family. But the book really is about sad people caught up with family issues, death, and trying to cope when everything seems to falling apart. There is juxtaposition here with the detailed descriptions of taxidermy and how Morton’s family is carved up in pieces, with this merged with that.

Jessa-Lynn is likable, yet distant here –even as she narrates. It took a while for me to like her, but she is strange and unusual –I could see Goth people finding her as a soul mate. Milo, her brother, is sort of manchild, who loved his wife, even though she seemed not to love him (and I’m unsure if Brynn truly loved Jessa-Lynn either. It’s great to see a bisexual character here, but Brynn comes across more as someone who can’t decide on what life she wants to live, so she splits). The two kids, Lolee and Bastien are rendered very well –though I question how close Bastien is to being a serial killer, as there is some questionable ways some animals are acquired. There’s also, from my point of view, too much detailed description of creating a taxidermy mounting. It would not be for the squeamish.

In the end, I found I had mixed feeling for this book. There are some quirky aspects, some dark, almost gallows humor here, but Mostly Dead Things takes too much glee in its descriptions of rendering the dead things, and the humor is too wildly spread; it’s a sad and strange tale about getting through the grieving process.