This tender and sensitive treatment of how we view death, how we deal with it, how we experience it is deeply moving. Travis is an ordinary if decent looking 30something who is death. Not the caped, scythe-wielding spectre we are used to assigning that role. He attends the last moments of people’s lives with tea and sympathy, with comradeship, conversation and comfort. He knows everything about their lives including how and when they will end and does his best to make the passing easier. All is as well as can be expected until he falls in love with the woman who lives across the hall from the apartment where he dwells and restores photographs. He adores her daughter and becomes her fast friend and surrogate father figure.

But, as much as he is accustomed to the demise of those around him he is devastated by the girl’s death. Travis does his best within his limitations to console the grieved mother but he falls short of making her grief tolerable. What ensues is a years-long process that is painful and beautiful by turns making his existence a burden. Along the way he attends the passing of middle-aged men, old women, animals, children and villains. His way is a weary one and the toll begins to tell.

Written with extraordinary sensitivity and skill the narrative flows smoothly and seamlessly as we watch the maturation and senescence of a mythical figure who will be known to us all. It matters not that he is immortal; he is growing old and tired and even wishes for his own end. As strange as it may seem the reader is in sympathy with this much-feared phantom who is, after all, human in many ways. The tale is remarkable in its imagination of a concept most have not considered at all: can death be a positive experience? Some ease may be gained by reading this book and understanding the rightful place death takes in our lives. This is the type of book in which the reader may be tempted to return to certain passages and reread them simply because they are so beautiful.