While billed as a novel in stories, Alix Strauss' The Joy of Funerals may at first confuse readers expecting the character-driven unity of Ursula Hegi's Floating in My Mother's Palm or Lucinda Rosenfeld's What She Saw. . . Eight of the book's nine stories feature different protagonists, each dealing with a kind of bereavement. In "Recovering Larry," Leslie eats the ashes from burnt photographs of her dead husband with breakfast cereal, then seduces fellow mourners at the cemetery where he is buried. Helen, a compulsive shopper, makes a desperate bid to hold on to Marty, her deceased therapist and lover in "Shrinking Away." Bereavement works on several levels in "Versions of You," one of the novel's strongest episodes. Here, Shannon tries to stoke a relationship at work; her awkward attempts at intimacy as an adult are deftly paralleled to the abandonment she experiences as a child. Recalling Shannon's salesman father, Strauss writes, "[S]he was used to waiting. As a child she would wait by the screen door, anxious for her father to return from his long day. Before he had a chance to get out of the car, she would run up to him, eager to carry his heavy suitcase filled with useless items everyone was supposed to need in their lives [É]."

Narratives that cohere around a particular theme, rather than a specific character or place, are not unprecedented. Robert Coover's A Night at the Movies Or, You Must Remember This, for instance, presents a series of stories that play on the different genres (comedy, musical, etc.) encountered by moviegoers. While each story is radically different in terms of protagonist and style, Coover's eponymous conceit gives the episodes a satisfying unity. Had Strauss kept The Joy of Funerals to the first eight stories, she would have created a similarly unified collection centered on the theme of death and grieving. But patient readers can see all the stories come together in the ninth, novella-length title piece. Nina Perlman, the narrator, is an insufferable narcissist for whom funerals are part therapy, part celebrity red carpet:

Vicki trails behind, talking loudly on her cell phone, dark glasses over her eyes, tissues in her hand. She's dressed in a green suit that's too tight and too short. She looks as if she's falling out of it. I want to cry at how bad she looks and must quell my desire to take her by the hand and lead her into Ann Taylor, which is across the street, and buy her an outfit that fits. I want to greet her, tell her how sorry I am about her mother, but she's too absorbed in her call to notice me.

Strauss chips away at the unreliable narrator's complacency until Nina must choose between a living death and a possible emotional reawakening. The fates of the novel's eight preceding protagonists are implicated in Nina's own bereavement.

If Strauss' narrative is any indication, rumors of the novel's exhaustion and imminent death have been greatly exaggerated. The novel-in-stories genre seems perfectly suited to Strauss' theme, which is ultimately shared by all but experienced alone.