Review: Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune
I really had a tremendous time reading this book. I read it as a part of a book club I am in (hello bookclub people) and I do think I would have read this book either way but I would have probably read it later.
I wrote a general outline for my review of this book literally months ago and am just now actually filling it out.
This book is about Wallace who has recently died, he is essentially being held in an on earth purgatory where a very small group of alive people and ghosts can see him for a limited period of time before he is expected to go on into the next stage of the afterlife. Hugo, the reaper/coffee shop owner, is the person tasked with caring for the dead he encounters.
The thing that I loved the most about this book was that it is a really loving and reflective path through grief. Wallace is grieving his own death obviously, and that is a really interesting exploration, but we also get to see other ghosts handling grief in very different ways than Wallace, Hugo is grieving his dead grandfather whose ghost is still around, and a mother who is grieving the many years old death of her child. Following these different experiences with grief surrounding death was really affecting and engaging.
This book has a lot of legal frameworks and proceedings in the way that death is presented to be working. We see the beings in charge of death as presiding over a really punitive system, they occasionally claim helplessness to the unfeeling nature of their judgments of the dead. This is contrasted with Hugo's restorative and compassionate approach to the dead. It is really interesting to look at this book as a reflection on righting harm done to those around us, seeing the ways that unnuanced punishment fails not only the person being punished but also their community including the people they hurt. I think this concept is really well explored with both the afterlife bureaucracy and Wallace's ex-wife.
Hugo is a true romance hero. He is dynamic and romantic and going through emotional turmoil. I just absolutely was swept away by the love story presented in this book. The other supporting characters to this story are an excellent grumpy old (dead) man, and a sardonic young woman training to be involved with death. I just fell for every character one by one.
I particularly liked that this book is so much about a journey from being the central player to being an active community member. Wallace learns over the course of this book how to truly care for those around him. We see him struggling to see outside of his own experience, to show the compassion he want to receive, and we see him seek to make this right. He takes real action to repair the harm he has done. I think that this is very deftly and thoughtfully done.
