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“Why not try something different instead of the same old shit thats been making us miserable our whole lives”
“I havent been miserable my whole life!”
“Really Ive been pretty miserable.
”
Mostly Dead Things was brought to my attention a couple of months ago via way of a recommendation by my friend sitelinkMindy, To her I say .
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The jumping off point to this story is when JessaLynn finds her daddy has blown his brains out on the specimen table in the familys taxidermy shop.
From there we meet the other members of the family brother Milo whose wife that left him also happened to be JessaLynns girlfriend, Milos daughter Lolee who was pretty much the daughter Ive never had, his stepson Bastien back from rehab and a man of dubious means, and their mother recent widow turned pornographic taxidermy artist.
These were my people. What can I say .
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Ha! Not really, Im about as basic as they come, However, Im also pretty much white trash so I fell head over heels for all of these quirky misfits, I mean, if there was ever a book designed for me it would be one about a dysfunctional family who owns a taxidermy shop, right!!! For realz,
With my father gone, gag taxidermy paid the rent, I pinned antlers to rabbit heads stuffed with foam cuttings, shellacked frogs propped at miniature card tables, boiled a million alligator skulls, mouths stuffed with pointy teeth painted blue and orange for UF football fans.
I turned ducklings into mermaids, fish tails shimmering greengold,
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Not to mention it was set in Florida,
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STFU John Oliver! Dear Florida: Never stop being you,
At the end of the day this was a bizarre little book about getting through the grieving process and finding yourself, Definitely not a book for everyone very detailed in description of creating a mount not to mention the way some of the animals were acquired, but Mitchell and I liked it enough for everyone.
Just look how happy it made him,
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I'll definitely be buying a hard copy of this one for the bookhoardshelves, Despite the neon bright cover that screams Quirky! Funny!, Mostly Dead Things is Mostly about Sad People, and I didnt find much mirth in this debut maybe a sardonic undercurrent, at best.
Instead, this is quite a dark story about a family of grieving, emotionally damaged people,
The narrator, Jessa, has only ever loved one woman, Brynn, but Brynn chose the more conventional life of marriage and babies offered by Jessas brother Milo while continuing to have sex with Jessa on the sly.
This awkward love triangle holds, barely,
until one day Brynn abruptly walks out on them both, also abandoning her small children in the process,
Several years later, Jessa and Milos father kills himself, leaving Jessa struggling to manage the family taxidermy business, and their mother channelling her pain into grotesque, pornographic art made from dead animal parts.
A family unit devastated by these twin blows, the lost binary star at the centre of their collective orbit, is the main narrative strand, Interspersed flashbacks delve into Jessas childhood, and complicated relationships with both her father and Brynn,
The books title can read “mostly deadthings” or “mostlydead things”, There are a lot of dead things in this book, usually animals, but also yards full of dead grass, dead neighbourhoods, dead relationships, Emotionally closed off and numbing herself with alcohol, Jessa is only “mostlydead”, as is her brother Milo,
Its a grimy book, The swampy, muggy Floridian setting deliquescing roadkill the gross yet mundane details of human bodies Arnett creates a pervasive grubbiness throughout, These descriptions are not extreme, but they are frequent, and endless repetition of words like muck amp grime amp puke amp snot amp blood amp dank belabours the point.
Creating this miasma takes up so much space on every page that the story struggles under the weight of it all, leaving the main narrative undercooked,
Characters too are sketched, rather than fully formed we are presented with every oozing zit and flaking scab but learn far less of their interior lives, Perhaps it doesnt help that the two ostensibly dominant, charismatic characters are Jessas dad and Brynn, who are both defined by their absence, only seen in flashbacks and never really make a strong impression.
By the time that the remaining family members make their way back to each other as their emotional arc rather predictably dictates, this payoff felt a little false: too pat, and not fully earned.
Mostly Dead Things is an unconventional family drama that didnt quite hit the mark for me,stars. Who knew that a novel about a taxidermist who shoots himself and his adult daughter who literally cleans up the mess and takes over the family business could be SO moving and SO funny and SO surprising Kristen Arnett is an astute observer of the human condition, like all terrific writers, and I savored narrator JessaLynn Morton and her seriously oddball family and friends.
Bonus: IT'S SET IN FLORIDA, WHICH MAKES ALL THAT WEIRDNESS ALL THE MORE WONDERFUL, Quite the queer novel! I loved the queerness of Mostly Dead Things, its eccentricity, its bi representation, and its messy, complicated associations between dead animals and human relationships and sexuality and grief.
Theres a raw physicality to this novel that will resonate with those who appreciate language that appeals to the senses, like textures, scents, and motions like breaking into something with your hands or peeling something apart to reveal what lies underneath.
I feel like this book centers on grief, an important topic, and yet I wanted more from the characters and the story, Our main character, JessaLynn, mourns both her father who died by suicide as well as her lover who also was married to her brother who abandoned her, The sheer enormity of JessaLynns grief pervades her life and the lives of the other characters in the novel, Yet, the emotions felt a bit too removed for me, and the characters interior lives felt too obscured for me to make an honest connection with them, Im not sure if this is the desired response, given that JessaLynns emotional arc seems to be that she, and the rest of her family, all repress their emotions surrounding JessaLynns fathers death and JessaLynns lover Brynn leaving without a word.
But by the time the characters finally started opening up toward the end of the book, I felt that I hadnt connected with them enough during the beginning and middle to truly care.
Overall, an okay book with solid queer representation by a queer author, Not my cup of tea but it may resonate with those who appreciate dark humor and books about the weight of things left unsaid, sitelink
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I was trying to project, "I swear I'm not a psycho" vibes to the people sideeying me for reading this book, even though the title was basicallyof the reason behind why I applied for this in the first place.
MOSTLY DEAD THINGS is a book chockfull of dark humor, and is definitely not for the faint of heart, I thought Carl Hiaasen had the market cornered on the unique brand of Floridianstyle "crazy," but apparently Kristen Arnett is moving in on his territory,
Jessa comes from a family of taxidermists getting into the family business was the one surefire way she had of bonding with her somewhat aloof father.
But when he takes his life into his own hands following a cancer diagnosis, the family is split apart, Jessa's brother, Milo, withdraws away from his mother, sister, and children, Their mother begins to methodically destroy her late husband's animals, turning them into disturbingly erotic displays, And Jessa is torn between stopping her mother and preserving her father's memory, and obsessing over Brynn, her brother's wife, and the woman she's been having a relationship with since high school.
MOSTLY DEAD THINGS doesn't shirk on the gory details, so be prepared to learn everything you probably never wanted to know about taxidermy, That part didn't bother me much, since I've read a couple nonfiction books about taxidermy as well, but sensitive readers should know that there are some animal deaths in here, some of them quite cruel.
There's also the whole cheating factor, with Brynn stringing along two siblings for years, and Jessa knowingly continuing her affair with her brother's wife, I know I have some friends who can't stand to read about adultery and cheating, and that's a pretty significant plot point in MOSTLY DEAD THINGS it can't be avoided.
MOSTLY DEAD THINGS is a pretty interesting look at a dysfunctional family's various ways of attempting to overcome grief, Some scenes were darkly funny, and others were bizarre to the point of being cringeworthy, One thing for sure, is that I've never read a book quite like this, and in a market that's inundated with copycats, originality is definitely noteworthy and appreciated, I'm giving this bookbecause I did like it and I thought it took some brave risks, but some of the characters fell a little flat for me and the ending fizzled out despite a pretty compelling beginning.
Overall, not bad,
Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy in exchange for an honest review!
to,stars.