This posthumous collection by Denis Johnson displays a series of stances toward death: courting it, anticipating it, solving its puzzles, parsing out how it affects kinship. One clever story, “Doppelgänger, Poltergeist,” explores the lengths to which one young man will go to find his brother’s purported stillborn twin. It is the most fully rounded and ambitious piece of the lot. Other selections have a less clarified point, sometimes too elusive for this reader.In the title story, Bill Whitman,...
October 13, 2020
"The One-in-a-Million Boy" by Monica Wood
This novel traces the posthumous influence of an 11 year-old boy on a sympathetic set of adults, and traces the effects of his life and death to self-discovery, love, responsibility, and record-setting longevity. It’s a unique, gratifying read, written with intelligence, wisdom, and most of all, charity. The author’s kindness extends to her characters as well as her readers: the love the characters feel for each other reaches the surface in unusual ways. And Monica Wood’s readers feel her kindness...
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