Bud Stanley is an obituary writer who is afraid to live. Yes, his wife recently left him for a “far more interesting” man. Yes, he goes on a particularly awful blind date with a woman who brings her ex. And yes, he has too many glasses of Scotch one night and proceeds to pen and publish his own obituary. The newspaper wants to fire him. But now the company’s system has him listed as dead. And the company can’t fire a dead person. The ensuing fallout forces him to realize that life may be actually worth living.

As Bud awaits his fate at work, his life hangs in the balance. Given another shot by his boss and encouraged by his best friend, Tim, a worldly and wise former art dealer, Bud starts to attend the wakes and funerals of strangers to learn how to live.

I loved the absurdity of this book’s premise. It left me hoping for something amusing and perhaps a little bizarre that would make me think about how the story of our lives should be edited as we go along and not submitted as a first draft on our deathbed.

Click on the YouTube link below to see how this book was pitched.

The premise was intriguing, but I ended up setting this book aside almost as soon as it got started.

My problem was that this is a story told in the first person by a person I have no desire to spend any time with.

An hour into this seven-and-a-half-hour story, I’d reached the morning after the night before when Bud (now there’s a zero-charisma name) had accidentally uploaded his own obituary to the paper he works for. I should have been relishing watching Bud’s life implode and then seeing if he can, as our politicians like to put it, Build Back Better. Instead, my inner pedant was shouting, “PLEASE make it stop.” I knew what he meant. I realised that I didn’t want to listen to another minute of self-indulgent whining by this 44-year-old man-boy.

Poor Bud. His life has no meaning. So he drinks and self-depricates. Woe is him.

I understand that I was supposed to feel sorry for Bud and I was probably supposed to admire the humour he used to distance himself from his own life as he wallowed in his depression but all I wanted to do was to tell him to shut up, suck it up and get real.

You can see why I didn’t choose to make a career as a psychotherapist.

Anyway, for my own sanity, I set this aside at 15%.