Status Updates From The Sundowner's Dance

Katherine thinks “no one was ever truly ready [to die], not even the dying.”

The heart of this book is the fear of mortality

“Hell of a thing, learning you have an anxiety disorder in your fifties.”

Keisling depicts a complete mental health journey within these pages. It’s so relatable

“Go fuck off to your garden, Gary”
😂 yeah fuck Gary

Playing host to a cosmic parasite 🪱 ☄️

“To taste Our gift is to accept Our gift. To refuse is to become a prisoner in your body. All you are will wither away until your mind is but dust. Accepts us or dissolve into nothing”

👀 👀 oh, shit

Origins of the neighborhood — Bailey’s Rock 🐮 🪱 💀

This is so unsettling and menacing. I love it

Nothing selfish in looking after your own sanity

“I suppose every monster needs a Renfield.”

Jerry suspects the realtor 👀

“Arthur’s a cult of personality, and they’re all drinking his Kool-Aid.”

Fairview looks like Heaven’s Gate

Other Fairview residents have experienced intense joint pain like Jerry, then came memory loss, all of it is chalked up to dementia and sundowner’s dementia

Katherine and Jerry discuss their deceased spouses. “Memories…They’re the ghosts that haunt us, and it’s always so hard to free ourselves from them.”

Jerry at Arthur’s for dinner, thinks he’s like a cult leader and then dispels the idea. “Hardly a cult leader. He’s more like Jim Buffet than Jim Jones.”

There’s so much empathy to be gained from this novel. Keisling is a poet when it comes to cosmic horror, anxiety, depression, and loss

I love this description of depression, a black dog howling in your mind

There are so many fun Easter eggs in The Sundowner’s Dance

- Bob Ottone was makes the best Cosmo, which I think might be a nod to author Robert P. Ottone 🤭
- Salem’s Lot
- S.A. Cosby

An old woman, Katherine, warns Jerry to leave. Says “The moon watches. It sees. It sees.”

Sundowner syndrome - now I get the title. It’s brilliant 🙌

Creepy neighbors with their saying, “by the moon’s eye,” and their shared greeting, “Howdy, neighbor!”

Giving The Truman Show

“A town without a library is like a skull without a brain.” 📚 🧠

“The swell of grief was as instant as it was heavy. A sucker punch of reality, time, and gravity.”

Keisling evokes powerful empathy that makes readers feel Jerry’s loss of his wife, Abby, again and again

“Retirement communities are where people go to die.”