Novels by Ben Reeves and Matt Haig look at life through the eyes of death (literally)
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What is the premise of Ben Reeves’ debut novel “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt”?
Hello, I'm Alyssa Nadmorney, and you're listening to NPR's Book of the Day. Today on the show, two fiction reads that help unpack what it means to be alive. In a minute we'll hear from author Matt Haig about his latest novel, The Midnight Train, which, like so many of his great books, takes a philosophical, fantastical look at the life we choose. But first, a book about death and well, life. It's called Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt. And it's the debut novel from Ben Reeves. The main character is a man whose job it is to be with people in the last hour of their life. But for a guy so close to death, He still has so much to learn about life. Reeves spoke with all things considered host Scott Detroit.
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This next story is about a book about death. But wait, wait, wait, wait, stick with me, because I really promise a new novel about the Grim Reaper Walking Among Us is one of the best, most moving books I have read in years.
Travis Smith is The Personification of Death. Um which sounds really grim and morbid, but it's actually a very life affirming kind of book. It's it's very rich with life and nature.
Reeves, the book Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt is his publishing debut. It tells the story of Travis, who outwardly appears to be a normal guy living a boring life in an empty apartment, and how he slowly becomes a little too attached to the people around him.
His job is just to spend time with people in the last few moments of life. He will comfort them and listen to their stories and make them feel at peace before he takes them into whatever follows next, which we we never get to see in the book. And um we just get to see all these hopefully beautiful vignettes of all these different people from different walks of life as Travis spends time with them.
How does the character Travis, the personified Grim Reaper, interact with the people in his final hour?
I love how carefully you constructed the rules around him, his work, his world, how he exists. You explain some things, you hinted other things, and there's a lot that you just leave unsaid or unexplained. And I'm wondering how you approach that as you wrote this book. Did you kind of dial the meter one way or another, or was it easy to land on this middle ground of I'm just not going to explain some things?
Yeah, that that's interesting. I I don't generally like it in a book when they explain every single thing about how something works because we know deep, deep, deep down it's it's not real. So any answer I give is ultimately not going to be satisfying. I'd much rather we it's left to our imagination. We see certain things, we see that he's very, very in touch with the world around him and with nature. He almost seems to have a kind of omniscience, but I never wanted to explain it because I just I think that can almost take. Take away rather than add to the book.
So we meet Travis as he's making some of his rounds and and and and sitting with people and being with people as we die. But but the plot really starts moving. when he starts to grow attached to two people who live across the hall from him. Tell us about Dahlia and Layla and and what it is about them that draws Travis into their lives.
Yeah, so um Dahlia is a midwife and she's a single mother of two kids and um It it's against Travis's better judgment, 'cause you can imagine being death, you would not want to have close relationships with anybody. He takes his job very seriously and with a lot of respect, but he he doesn't make friends because Every single person he ever meets is i he's gonna watch them die.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the premise of Ben Reeves’ debut novel “Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt”?
0:02–2:29
2
How does the character Travis, the personified Grim Reaper, interact with the people in his final hour?
2:29–6:29
3
Why does Travis become attached to Dahlia and her daughter Layla despite his role as Death?
6:29–9:07
4
What does Ben Reeves say about leaving parts of the story unexplained and its effect on readers?
9:07–14:58
5
How does Matt Haig’s new novel “The Midnight Train” use the train metaphor to explore life choices?
14:58–19:48
6
Why did Haig choose a train instead of a library to frame his story about regret and second chances?
19:48–21:36
Speakers
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