Next Up: The Book of Dahlia

It’s that time again when I have to pick my next book on the list. However, I’m not likely to start it just yet. Right now I’m in the middle of Dan Chaon’s Await Your Reply for my book club. Since I’m hosting with Carley and we meet in less than a week, I figured I should probably get around to starting and finishing the book. It should be good as my mom had good things to say about it.

Once Await Your Reply is said and done, I will move on to The Book of Dahlia by Elisa Albert. I impulsively (and accidentally) bought this as a paperback a few months ago and put it aside in favor of e-books. However, I’m ready to give my Kindle a break and pick this one back up.

For those interested (and those like me who maybe bought it a long time ago and don’t remember what it’s about at all), here’s the description:

Meet Dahlia Finger: twenty-nine, depressed, whip-smart, occasionally affable, bracingly honest, resolutely single, and perennially unemployed. She spends her days stoned in front of the TV, watching the same movies repeatedly, like “a form of prayer.” But Dahlia’s so-called life is upended by an aggressive, inoperable brain tumor.

Stunned and uncomprehending, Dahlia must work toward reluctant emotional reckoning with the aid of a questionable self-help guide. She obsessively revisits the myriad heartbreaks, disappointments, rages, and regrets that comprise the story of her life — from her parents’ haphazard Israeli courtship to her kibbutz conception; from the role of beloved daughter and little sister to that of abandoned, suicidal adolescent; from an affluent childhood in Los Angeles to an aimless existence in the gentrified wilds of Brooklyn; from a girl with “options” to a girl with none — convinced that cancer struck because she herself is somehow at fault.

With her take-no-prisoners perspective, her depressive humor, and her extreme vulnerability, Dahlia Finger is an unforgettable anti-heroine. This staggering portrait of one young woman’s life and death confirms Elisa Albert as a “witty, incisive” (Variety) and even “wonder-inducing” writer (Time Out New York).

I’m going to be honest and say that until I copied and pasted that summary above I did not realize I had chosen yet another book essentially about death. But this blog post was already almost done so it hardly seems worth putting off again.

My mom really knew how to pick some uplifting reading, eh?