Name: Mostly Dead Things
ISBN: 9781947793309

Kristen Arnett

A New York Times Bestseller "This book is my song of the summer." --Parul Sehgal, The New York Times A Most Anticipated Book of 2019 at Esquire, The Week, BuzzFeed, NYLON, Bustle, HuffPost, The Boston Globe, and more.

Mostly Dead Things

Emiley Jones

We spent so much time looking for pieces of ourselves in other people that we never realized they were busy searching for the same things in us.

Emma Hak-Kovacs

“Will I ever get tired of this?” I asked the question aloud, though I already knew the answer. You couldn’t get sick of sustenance when you were starving.

You don’t know what love is, I thought, wanting to smack him. Love was the steady burn of acid indigestion. Love was a punch in the gut that ruptured your spleen. Love was a broken telephone that refused to dial out. Milo told Brynn he loved her and I could see from the look on his face he thought the words were a magical incantation. Say the word love and it’s there for you; say the word love and the other person feels it too. What I should have told him that day: love makes you an open wound, susceptible to infection. But he was young then and so was I, and I wanted their happiness more than my own. So I swallowed my pain and let myself pretend love could flourish if I didn’t stand in its way.

I often wondered why we couldn’t talk about the present, why the past held all the promise while the future sat before us like stagnant water.

Love was a thing that needed constant care. Our intimacy was an uprooted plant, shriveled and withered.

That was the thing about Bastien. He might run down some peacocks in the middle of a golf course, but at the end of the day he had too much love in him to deal with how shitty human beings were to each other.

Ryan Mateyk

not what I was expecting and it took awhile to get into it but I ended up enjoying this quite a bit.

Wes Michaud

Weird, complex, queer, interesting. This book sent me on a rollercoaster of emotions and for some strange reason I found myself relating to Jessa despite the fact I'm a 17-year-old, and she's 30 something years old  it might be the fact that both of us have a pretty much nonexistent social life. I enjoyed this book, and it's definitely more than meets the eye Ps I am sorry for traumatizing you when telling you about this book at book club AJ

I probably also relate it jessa because we’re both lesbians

Unforgettable characters, a beautifully gruesome portrait of the complexities of family and love and life. 

erin alise 

I enjoyed every moment of this vivid snapshot of family dynamics, grief, and Florida. Some dark humor, difficult relationships, and lots of dead and dying things. 

quite depressing and morbid but super unique and interesting. i thought the writing was vivid and engaging. i wish jessa's redemption arc had started a little earlier/developed over more time, i was losing my patience..

petrina

debre

Traci Wilbanks

I'm pretty sure I could read Kristen Arnett describe anything. She really puts you in the moment. You experience all the things that the character is encountering - the sights, the smells, the touches.

Weird, complex, queer, interesting. This book sent me on a rollercoaster of emotions and for some strange reason I found myself relating to Jessa despite the fact I'm a 17-year-old, and she's 30 something years old it might be the fact that both of us have a pretty much nonexistent social life. I enjoyed this book, and it's definitely more than meets the eye Ps I am sorry for traumatizing you when telling you about this book at book club AJ

I probably also relate it jessa because we’re both lesbians

Jonathan Grunert

I was expecting the taxidermy in this wonderful novel to be the quirky backdrop for the story. Much to my delight, it was integral to the story, its structure, and its characters, in a novel that gets at the challenges of first love, mature love, loss, born family, and chosen family. 
Mostly Dead Things is a strange novel, and it’s very funny. It’s a very mature first novel, with familiar yet new characters. In short, this is a triumph.

One of the best books I’ve read this year

Sarah Wood

Gisela Ayala 

As the title suggests there are plenty of dead things in the book - relationships, people, and plenty of animals (so if you are against that, this may not the book for you). There is your trigger warning for you. 

I didn't know ANYTHING about taxidermy and now I think I know too much. I don't agree with the main character Jessa or the way many of the characters go about their day and how they reacted to the two people she loved exiting their lives (the only character I truly liked was Jessa's mother), but that doesn't take away from the fact that their issues engrossed me completely. I'll say this 100 times, unlikeable characters are not a bad thing when done right and Kristen Arnett did it so right. 


  "Nobody can ever know another person."


Ultimately this book is about love and what to do with it when it's misplaced or when you think you knew a person and they end up surprising you.

Florida can be a strange place and Kristen Arnett definitely was able to describe some of the weirdness that can be found here. Especially in a wonderful passage where she described Floridians erasing all of their history and building something new (I SAY THAT ALL THE DAMN TIME). Although I will say, the environment is probably not everyone's experience of Florida because Florida itself is diverse in its regions. 

Any ways, this book was phenomenal.

Dani Edgin

I tried you guys, I really did. I just couldn’t love this book, and I was so hopeful.

SnarkByThePage

I loved this book! It was honest and raw and graphic and interesting. I found myself loving these characters for their nuggets of good character as well as their many flaws.

What does it take to come back to life? For Jessa-Lynn Morton, the question is not an abstract one. In the wake of her father's suicide, Jessa has stepped up to manage his failing taxidermy business while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the taxidermy shop to make provocative animal art, while her brother, Milo, withdraws. And Brynn, Milo's wife--and the only person Jessa's ever been in love with--walks out without a word. It's not until the Mortons reach a tipping point that a string of unexpected incidents begins to open up surprising possibilities and second chances. But will they be enough to salvage this family, to help them find their way back to one another? Kristen Arnett's breakout bestseller is a darkly funny family portrait; a peculiar, bighearted look at love and loss and the ways we live through them together.

Brynn Weltin

I mainly bought this book because the love interest and I share a name. I wasnt let down, but I wasn't entirely impressed either. At times, Jessa bothered me with her whiney, selfish attitude but also felt relatable as someone who has been processing her own grief over the death of a former love. My biggest gripe, however, is how rushed her relationship with Lucinda felt.

Jennifer Crumbling

Niki Whittaker 

Mia McCoy

Brenda

Marsh

Georgie Wishart

Reilly C.

Kristen Arnett's breakout bestseller is a darkly funny, big-hearted American debut about family, love, death and taxidermy! 'This book is my song of the summer' Parul Seghal, New York Times What does it take to come back to life? For Jessa-Lynn Morton, the question is not an abstract one. In the wake of her father's suicide, Jessa has stepped up to manage his failing taxidermy business while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the taxidermy shop to make provocative animal art, while her brother, Milo, withdraws. And Brynn, Milo's wife?and the only person Jessa's ever been in love with?walks out without a word. It's not until the Mortons reach a tipping point that a string of unexpected incidents begins to open up surprising possibilities and second chances. But will they be enough to salvage this family, to help them find their way back to one another? Kristen Arnett's breakout bestseller is a darkly funny family portrait; a peculiar, bighearted look at love and loss and the ways we live through them together. 'Messed-up families, scandalous love affairs, art, life, death and the great state of Florida in one delicious, darkly funny package. Kristen Arnett is a wickedly talented and a wholly original voice' Jami Attenberg 'There's a gunslinger cool to every sentence . . . Kristen Arnett is the queen of the Florida no one has ever told you about' Alexander Chee 'The writing is subtle and meditative, with the tactile weight of dense fur' The New Yorker

Mostly Dead Things

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