Christopher Eustache’s THE ART OF DYING is not a joyous read, but it is a worthwhile one. In this collection of short stories, Eustache succeeds in conjuring worlds that are by turns bleak, dispiriting, and farcical—but never boring.
THE ART OF DYING is wide-ranging in its scope, taking in contemporary noir and dystopian science fiction—among other genres. While all of the stories in this collection are well written, there are some peculiar tonal shifts. The opener, “The Urge,” tells the story of a person in the midst of an existential crisis who decides to kill themselves—lying down in the road in front of an oncoming vehicle—which leads to a darker, more brooding, and more ambiguous ending than expected. By contrast, a much less impressive work would be “The Enemy.” Set in a dystopian future, this story features a main character whose people are in conflict (it is not quite a war) with the “Drobax,” whom he has never seen. While the voice of a teenaged boy is not a little skillfully invoked, the twist is rather telegraphed, and the story as a whole too closely resembles 1960s and 1970s sci-fi in the manner of its central conceit (as well as how the twist is revealed). It seems generous to read it as a critique of a certain societal phenomenon that other authors across the decades have put to better use.
The pick of the stories—it is more a novelette, really weighing in at almost 100 pages, far exceeding any of the others in length—would be the title story. Ostensibly, it is about Norman, a young man spinning his wheels in an anonymous apartment in New York. He decides to write a computer game that questions reality—only to find he begins to question reality himself. This is excellent in every way: the evocation of the minor emotions, the innate understanding of pacing, the sense of ennui and of failing to understand oneself. Even the setting is almost Plathian—as is the minute attention to detail. In the end, “The Art of Dying” is a fitting bookend to a collection that impresses in its scope, ambition, and verve.
Christopher Eustache’s THE ART OF DYING is a fine collection of short stories that take the question of existence to its furthest extreme.
~Craig Jones for IndieReader