Life Events: A Novel

Written by Karolina Waclawiak

Narrated by Amy Landon

One of BuzzFeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2020 and one of The Millions Most Anticipated Books of the First Half of 2020

A woman at a crossroads learns the only way to reclaim her life is to help others die

Karolina Waclawiak’s breakout novel, Life Events, follows Evelyn, who, at thirty-seven, is on the verge of divorce and anxiously dreading the death of everyone she loves. She combats her existential crisis by avoiding her husband and aimlessly driving along the freeways of California looking for an escape—one that eventually comes when she discovers a collective of “exit guides.” Evelyn enrolls in their training course, where she learns to provide companionship and a final exit for terminally ill patients seeking a conscious departure.

She meets Daphne, a dying woman still full of life; Lawrence, an aging porn king; and Daniel, who seems too young to die and whom Evelyn falls for, despite knowing better, not to mention the exit guide code. Each client opens something new in Evelyn, allowing her a chance to access her own grief and confront the self-destructive ways she suppresses her pain. When Evelyn travels through the Southwest to an afterlife convention to further her death education, she must finally face her complicated relationship with her alcoholic father and reconcile her life choices.

Sensitively observed and darkly funny, Life Events is a moving, enlivening story of the human condition: the doldrums of loneliness, the consuming regret of past mistakes, and the thrill, finally, of finding meaning—and love—where you least expect it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Jul 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781799761389

Karolina Waclawiak

Karolina Waclawiak is the author of the novels How to Get into the Twin Palms and The Invaders. Formerly an editor at The Believer, she is the executive editor of culture at BuzzFeed News. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Hazlitt, and elsewhere.

Reviews for Life Events

[sparemethecensor · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I loved both of Waclawiak's other novels. This one is much weaker, sadly; if it were by a new author I doubt I would have persevered through to the end. Some beautiful descriptive imagery of the desert and ruminations on depression, life, and death, but ultimately not very satisfying.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was our script, and it soon spiraled into familiar territory, which ended in his sleeping on the couch and my staring at the ceiling alone in our bedroom. My first instinct was usually to fix, to make him happy, to take it back, and also to berate myself quietly for being a broken person who could not be a productive part of a unit. But this time I didn't do any of those things.

Evelyn is newly unemployed and her marriage is dying. She spends her free time on-line, reading articles and message boards about grief. She also trains to be a grief counselor, helping people and their loved ones through assisted suicide. She's not sure why she feels compelled to pre-grieve when she's never had a family member die. As she drives around greater Los Angeles, learning to help people die and remembering events from her marriage and her childhood, she feels like she's just drifting, but really she's moving forward.

This is a thoughtful, quiet novel that seems to be spinning its wheels for much of the novel, until all the pieces fall into place. Evelyn seems like she's going to start careening from disaster to disaster, when what's happening is that she's figuring out how to live. This novel snuck up on me, taking its time before pulling me entirely into Evelyn's world.