4/5 stars
What's it about? Graphic novelist Coral discovers her brother Jay dead by suicide and hides his passing from loved ones as she reconciles with the loss. In her first novel, Blackburn ably finds humor in the grief.
How’d I find it? I heard about this book on the Fully Booked podcast and had to read it after listening to the interview. Thanks to Multnomah County Library for the copy.
Who will enjoy this book? Those who savored The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty or Orange World by Karen Russell will appreciate the craft, wit, and humanity of Blackburn’s achievement.
What stood out? Dead in Long Beach, California is a collage of Coral’s mourning, excerpts from her science fiction series and fan fiction, and the reflections of an omniscient “we” who unpack key moments of Coral’s life and relationship with her brother. Both siblings remain inaccessible as characters, which makes Coral’s choices all the more horrid. But it works for Jay, a canvas for the book’s real focus: how major loss ripples and rocks through lives.
Also, this cover. Bananas. What on earth was the marketing strategy?
Which line made me feel something? A nugget of pure gold: “We have measured the hormones, the chemicals of fright and disbelief, the boil of the blood when a person encounters the dead. As close to one being as all of humanity truly is and pretends to be in their poems and scriptures, there is something different when the dead is familiar, when the corpse is expected to be articulated with a remembered smell, sound, and texture.”