The End or Something Like That - Ann Dee Ellis

There are a lot of things I don't understand. 

Like the time I found my mom sobbing in the car in the garage. Or the time my brother, Joe, left the house for three days and no one said anything about it. Or the time Dad decided not to run the 10K he'd been training for eight months to do. 

I don't understand why armpit hair grows so fast or why boys stand in groups and throw things at people. 

I don't understand how you can be so close to someone, so close that they know you wet the bed until you were ten. And then feel so, so, so far away.

Ellis's deceptively simple narrative tells the story of Emmy, a teenager who recently lost her best friend, Kim. Kim suffered from a congenital heart condition and knew her death would come soon. In preparation, she asked Emmy to to accompany her to a seminar with Dr. Ted Farnsworth, a man who claims to speak with the dead. Kim wanted Emmy to become a medium so that once dead, she would have a conduit back to the world. Emmy is not having much luck seeing Kim after death. However, she is coming across many other dead people she doesn't necessarily want to see.

I prayed to Kim. My best friend who saved me. She always saved me. I said: Dear Kim. Please. Please save me. 

That's when Ms. Dead Homeyer walked in the door.

Told in a narrative style that switches between past and present, Ellis's novel explores the often delicate and complex connections between the living and the dead, those we hope to remain connected with, and those we find ourselves connected to for seemingly unknown reasons. Grief and irrational actions are explored through spare prose that let us see how loss affects us in such strange and unimaginable ways.

When your best friend dies, things happen. You lie under your bed. You plan spiritual visitations. You watch a lot of TV. You eat turkey burgers.

Though some feel that the novel is too unfocused or too sparse in details, I found that the novel was a rather intriguing examination of life and loss through the lens of a girl who just happens to have contact with ghosts. 

Recommended