I started BEING DEAD with great excitement and admiration, and read along full of interest--because of the characters, who were, at first, so fully and deeply drawn. The bugs and beetles were neither upsetting nor very interesting--is everyone really surprised and troubled to hear that beetles eat dead bodies? What did upset me was the tiresome lack of depth of the main characters after the first half of the book. The author seemed to have …showed first 75 words of 269 total…

…showed last 75 words of 269 total…he does not do that here--the beautiful, spare ideas and complex characters he begins with, are abandoned rather than developed. The terribly poignant moment when Syl finds her baby teeth saved in a jar was all the sadder because the author seems to have shared Syl's lack of understanding of her parents--his characters. I felt sorrier for them on that count than for their being eaten by beetles. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.