Steven Rowley

3.5 Stars

The Guncle is back and is still in fine form!

Again, I don’t want to go into too many details. What I will say is that often, sequels have an upward climb to maintain that glowing first feeling of the original and while completely understandable, the older Maisie and Grant weren’t as captivating as they were 5 years younger. I completely know that Rowley depicted these characters realistically but sullen and antagonistic with an uphill battle to try and really engage these two dulled the shine for me.

However, Rowley brings back Patrick’s trademark wit and snark (especially deployed against a new nemesis), and I was continuously charmed by his world weary view, his apt observations of love which he too, needs to embrace and employ.

The one constant in life is always change, and this continued commentary on grief was a poignant reminder of its effect on how people heal and evolve without those they loved dearly.

Overall, honestly, I never expected to get another book about Patrick and company, but if Rowley deigns to give us more, I’ll be here to read their next adventure! Cheers to that wonderful ending!

Thank you to the author and GP Putnam’s Sons via NetGalley for a copy in exchange for a honest review… (plus d'informations)

The celebrants: five college friends from Berkeley who used to be six until one unexpectedly dies.

“They went to bed exactly two weeks before graduation thinking they would live forever and woke up to the last real lesson that college would teach them: all that begins, ends” (23).

Taking that lesson to heart, the five remaining friends enter a pact where each can invoke their own funeral at any point in life—a low-point, a traumatic tipping point, a rebirth point. This one-time funeral will serve to function as a reserve parachute when the main parachute of life doesn’t deploy. When you’re plummeting to the hard earth, pull the reserve, call in the funeral, and your closest college friends will be there to remind you: “to live in the present, to live for yourself, … that [you] were never as alone as [you] thought” and to “leave nothing left unsaid” (288, 214).

The book unfolds in the sequential order that each person calls for their own funeral, and while the events that precipitate each funeral are melancholic moments, the funerals themselves are full of humor and tenderness. They’re really made up of all the ingredients of a good reunion with old friends: emotional purging and laugh-out-loud scenarios and enlightening therapy. In the same way, this read is like a reunion with an old friend and one I’d highly recommend reuniting with—you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll feel hopeful, even knowing that “all that begins, ends.”… (plus d'informations)

“Patrick had even hoped that he might perhaps learn from them. That they might know the path out and somehow light the way” (104).

This is one of those books that warms your heart while simultaneously ripping it out. It’s witty and savvy and full of emotion, balancing the drudgery of weighty grief and the oasis of elusive happiness.

Patrick, a semi-retired actor living an isolated life in Palm Springs, reluctantly agrees to take in his niece and nephew after his sister-in-law has passed away and his brother has checked himself into a drug rehab facility for 90 days. Patrick wants to continue living his arid lifestyle free from attachments and the risk of losing love—and loved ones (again). The summer learning from the kids and the kids learning from him —how to get out of the quicksand of grief… (plus d'informations)