Life Events

A woman at a crossroads learns the only way to reclaim her life is to help others die in this novel from the author of The Invaders.

One of Buzzfeed’s 29 Books We Couldn’t Put Down This Year

“Every page of this novel is a point of no return; once you've read Karolina Waclawiak's Life Events, you will never see life, death, grief, and healing the same way.” —Saeed Jones, author of How We Fight for Our Lives

Evelyn, thirty-seven and on the verge of divorce, is dreading the death of everyone she loves. She combats her existential crisis by spending her days driving along California freeways, looking for an escape—one that eventually comes when discovers a collective of “exit guides.” She enrolls in their training course, where she learns to provide companionship and a final exit for terminally ill patients seeking 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 for whom she falls, breaking the exit guide code. Each person allows her into her own grief, pushing her to face what she’d rather avoid, including her past.

Sensitively observed and darkly funny, Life Events is a breakout novel about the human condition: solitude, trauma, regret, desire, and the thrill, finally, of finding meaning—and love—where you least expect it.

“Life Events is a masterwork in pleasurable dread. It’s a book that one-ups the faceless, gloomy, self-seriousness a dictionary usually associates with the word, and turns it into a fun interrogation of a feeling that every living person will one day confront: death, and our anxiety of it.” —Hayden Bennett, The Believer