Death with interruptions
"On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This, understandably, causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, funeral directors, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration - flags are hung out on balconies, people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home - families are left to care for the permanently dying, life-insurance policies become meaningless, and funeral directors are reduced to arranging burials for pet dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots. Death sits in her chilly apartment, where she lives alone with scythe and filing cabinets, and contemplates her experiment: What if no one ever died again? What if she, death with a small d, became human and were to fall in love?"--jacket blurb.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
4mentions
4people
2014–2025years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I also recommend "Death with Interruptions" by the same author. I too was blindsided by how it was written but once you get used to the style it just flows.
- I've always enjoyed fiction in situations like yours. Iain M. Banks has some accessible but interesting sci-fi (recommendations: Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons), and it's hard to go wrong with anything Jose Saramago wrote (recommendations: All the Names, Blindness, Death With Interruptions).
- > and from then on, people stopped dying. Which turned out to not be a blessing.
This bit seems very close to Saramago's novel Death with Interruptions [1].
- Some short story collections:
Longer Form (but all still quick reads):* This is How You Lose Her - Junot Diaz * Get in Trouble - Kelly Link * St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves - Karen Russell * The 10th of December - George Saunders * Nocturnes - Kazuo Ishiguro * After the Quake - Haruki Murakami * The Girl in the Flammable Skirt - Aimee Bender* The Buried Giant - Kazuo Ishiguro * Death with Interruptions - Jose Saramago * The Whispering Muse - Sjon
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