Published in 2020
288 pages
Karolina Waclawiak is the author of the critically acclaimed novels How to Get Into the Twin Palms and The Invaders. Life Events is her third novel. AWOL, a feature she co-wrote with Deb Shoval, premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival and has received praise from The Hollywood Reporter, IndieWire, Marie Claire, and more. Formerly an editor at the Believer, she is now the Executive Editor, Culture at BuzzFeed News.
Karolina received her BFA in Screenwriting from USC and her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, VQR, the Believer, Hazlitt, and other publications.
What is this book about?
A woman at a crossroads learns the only way to reclaim her life is to help others die
What if Evelyn’s whole life has been a mistake? At 37, she’s on the verge of divorce and anxiously awaiting everyone she loves dying on her. She combats her existential crisis by avoiding her husband and wandering the freeways of California looking for an escape before discovering a collective of exit guides. Evelyn enrolls in training courses where she learns to provide companionship and a final exit for terminally ill patients looking for a conscious departure.
She meets Daphne, a dying woman still full of life; Lawrence, an aging porn king; and Daniel, who seems too young to die, and whom she can’t help but fall for. Each client allows her a chance to access her own grief and confront the self-destructive ways she suppresses her pain. When Evelyn travels through the Southwest to an afterlife convention, she must finally face her complicated relationship with her alcoholic father and reckon with her life choices.
Life Events is about planning your next phase when you see your past as a failure and your future as an impossible obligation. Sensitively observed and darkly funny, Karolina Waclawiak’s breakout novel follows a woman searching for answers and intimacy while facing profound questions about how we live and die today.
