Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Book Review: One Death, Nine Stories by Marc Aronson & Various Other People



This books follow nine different characters' stories that are affected - some small, some huge - by the death of a boy named Kevin.

We see a person who has never heard of Kevin, someone who only knew of him, old friends, current friends, new friends, and family.

"Could he have imagined the ripple effect it would have?"
-Pg.100 HC

We see people mourn and reevaluate their lives, even though they didn't know him.

As with most books with short stories, I feel like you're always going to like some stories better then the rest. However, the fact that it all ties together and follows many stories yet, at the same time one story, was really intriguing.

We glean information about Kevin in most of the stories - like pieces of a puzzle. We learn who he was and how life shaped him. Dead at 19 and some can't bring themselves to accept what is going on.

I loved some stories, liked others and only thought one or two were meh. I didn't hate any of the stories.

This book showed how far reaching death can be. Especially in this age of internet and social media.

"How does one deal with a friends death?" A brothers death? A child's death?

"He deserved a life. And who doesn't make mistakes? Just Once? Everyone makes mistakes. Just once."
-Pg.51

I didn't like all of the characters (one in particular) but at the end of the day we learned more about Kevin which was kind of the point.

""You used to work there?"
"Yeah".
"What happened?"
"Lots"."
-PG.133


I can't really say much without getting into spoiler territory. Which would be easy to do, since this is not only about how many people can be affected by one death or how people deal with death - there's also the mystery of how Kevin died. It was very ambiguous although I feel like after getting a few pieces of the puzzle you can put it together fairly quickly.

In the end I gave this book 4/5 stars. I got this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.