When Eirinie learns of her best friend's death, she's thrown into a tailspin. How do we honor the dad? How do you process the loss of someone who you were so close to, so intertwined?

She remembers the times she spent with her friend. They were popular, growing up together and attending clubs together, but then they drifted apart. She initially suspects foul play and that her friend didn't die the way described. When she investigates further, she finds how much they have drifted apart and all so suddenly.

Carson's book is a beautiful encapsulation of grief. The core of these essays is the titular one. The da are Gods. We create shrines, talismans, and rituals to remember and honor the dead. The book itself becomes that shrine.

Favorite Passages:
Trying to remember the details of a story only you and I were privy to and thinking to call you and realising suddenly that I can’t. These stories are now mine to remember, the burden of our history, long but simple as it was, falls on my shoulders. I don’t want it. I don’t want to remember our trips to New York on my own. I don’t want to think about that bar, Clem’s, that probably still exists but is definitely different, out in Brooklyn where we drank underage and marveled at the size of the shots. I don’t want to remember that man, that old Black man in his designated seat at the bar who, when you walked into the room, said, “Damn girl, you look like a Tutankhamen exhibit,” and we laughed so hard he turned away from us. I don’t want to think about these things alone. They are ours, not just mine. What if I forget? Or misremember? Now I come to think of it, was he even that old? Did he turn away or is that a fabrication of a storyteller’s mind?

My sadness wasn’t about his imminent death but about the loss of a judgement time I had been counting on. He would never face his crimes against us, he would never hear my detailed unflinching account of life without him, or rather a life built around a Devon- shaped hole, he would never be sorry. I wanted him prostrate and repentant, he couldn’t die now, where was the fucking justice?

Beautifully written and heartbreaking memoir from a writer I'm so happy to have on my radar now. Grief is so complex, we will never have enough books about it.

I thought I knew what I was going to get when I started reading The Dead are Gods, but it ended up being more than I expected. There are passages in the book, that while reading them, I felt like I was in the room with the author watching her go through the motions and emotions of dealing with such a gut wrenching, unexpected loss. Reading text message snippets between Eirinie and Larissa, something so identifiable to us all, something so small and means nothing but everything at the same time. It reminds us that these moments have weight and power and that we often take them for granted.
This book talks about grief and friendship and how they intermingle and how they shouldn't, but love and memory push us through. Eirinie says in the beginning, "The only way out is through" and that's something to think about.

I hope to hear more from Eirinie Carson, she is someone to watch.

While this story was a beautiful tribute to a friend and a picture of the grieving process, it wasn't compulsively readable for me. I found the pages to be repetitive. I am sure this was a cathartic process for the author to write for their friend. It just was not the book for me.

This is one of those books that is difficult to review because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings AND because this story is so personal. Someone so young dying is tragic. BUT, this book feels like it's coming from a very privileged place where the writer is just experiencing death and/or bad things happening for the first time in her life and somehow she's turned it into a book deal.

While there are passages that are well written, this feels almost alike a rehab exercise.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read and review.

I really enjoyed this memoir, and the author coping with her friend's death. I thought the writing was beautiful and raw. I would certainly read more from Eirinie Carson.

This was a very sad personal tale of a woman who finds out her friend has died and what she went through dealing with that news. She tries to make sense of her death and finds out a lot of about her, including unexpected truths. I really enjoyed the book as much as you could a book with such a sad premise. I liked how realistic her voice was, some memoirs really read as forced or cobbled together but this seemed so real.