On dying alone

When I walked into the bookstore I was looking for a novel called How Not to Die Alone by Richard Roper that I had seen reviewed. Instead I found a book called Something to Live For by the same author. When I picked it up I saw that it was the same book, just with a different title.

This confusing change of title from hardback to paperback was probably intended to give it a more positive spin, but I think it was a mistake, for not dying alone is what this wonderful British novel is all about.

Andrew has an odd government job. When bodies of individuals are found, often weeks after their deaths, it is his responsibility to go into the foul-smelling residences and search for signs of relatives or, failing that, enough money to pay for the funeral services.

As it happens, Andrew himself lives alone with his model trains. Yet to the people he works with he pretends to have a wife and two children. His fantasy somehow strengthens him. Roper writes, "They were his happiness and his strength and the thing that kept him going. Didn't that make them just as real as everyone else's family?"

Then he meets Peggy, a new employee with a marriage that is all too real. Her husband keeps promising to stop drinking but never does. She actually envies Andrew's happy home life.

Peggy gives Andrew an incentive to rethink his life and his lies. Perhaps he won't have to die alone like those people whose debris he must sort through for his job. Or, if you wish, perhaps he now has something to live for.

I enjoyed this book for Roper's humor and insights. This is his first novel, but we can look forward to his next one, whatever its titles.