Books: Under the Whispering Door By TJ Klune (2021)

"When a reaper comes to collect Wallace Price from his own funeral, Wallace suspects he really might be dead. Instead of leading him directly to the afterlife, the reaper takes him to a small village. On the outskirts, off the path through the woods, tucked between mountains, is a particular tea shop, run by a man named Hugo. Hugo is the tea shop's owner to locals and the ferryman to souls who need to cross over. But Wallace isn't ready to abandon the life he barely lived. With Hugo's help he finally starts to learn about all the things he missed in life. When the Manager, a curious and powerful being, arrives at the tea shop and gives Wallace one week to cross over, Wallace sets about living a lifetime in seven days."

This is a novel about grief, even with Klune’s somewhat cock-eyed, sometime very funny view of the world. Wallace Price is an uptight lawyer who looks only out for himself and the goals of his clients and bosses. He has money, named success, and everything that comes with being a white man in the 21^st Century –always failing up. But a heart attack ends his life, and to his shock and surprise, this pisses him off. But his Reaper, Mei, brings him to Charron Crossings in the middle of nowhere; Wallace meets Hugo the ferryman, a man of high empathic abilities and where with Mei, Hugo, the ghosts of Hugo’s granddad Nelson and Dug like dog named Apollo, they show Wallace that the river of life goes only one way and on the fourth floor of the teas shop is a door that will usher the ghosts onto their next adventure.

In his afterword, Klune makes mention that Under the Whispering Door was a personal book about death, about losing someone close to you, and maybe about missed opportunities. For those who watched the NBC sitcom The Good Place, will get a lot of what Klune is saying here. Much like that beloved series, the road to understanding is filled with some dark humor and weirdness. He tries, rather successfully, to not be treacle here, not to pound you over the head with the idea that most people don’t start to live until something horrible happens. Wallace does go through this, regretting his actions as a corporate lawyer, the break-up of his marriage, the fact that he was bisexual (which is great, because Hugo is gay). These themes are there, even if I don’t think the book achieved any profound meaning that I'm assuming Klune was trying to do.

It has many strengths, it's charming and warm, but it remains a somewhat familiar story with familiar tropes. Still, I enjoyed the book, and like the problematical The House on the Cerulean Sea, it's still a worthy read.