T.J. Klune’s Under the Whispering Door is one
which I probably would have seen on a shelf and not thought twice about picking
up. It’s a contemporary fantasy romance
about death, and when it comes to romance, I’ve never particularly found that
much of an appeal for romance. A friend recommended
it to me on a whim thinking I’d like it, so I picked up a copy and read
it. It’s a book that does a lot to
engage the reader with the concept of death and dealing with death in a contemporary
setting. There’s this contemplative
nature to the book, not really too much of a plot, but more a series of vignettes
that evolve the characters and overlap with one another. There are five core characters coexisting,
three of them dead, two of them alive, all of them understanding the scenario of
life after death. The book could be best
described as a warm blanket of going through grief with hints of absurdism like
the fact that the closest thing to God that makes the universe of life and death
work is a pre-teen boy who has a thin veneer of omniscience but there’s quite a
bit of evidence in the text that it’s just a façade to keep things running. They eventually make the ending, which is a
really well done deus ex machina, feel all the more satisfying as this
character has been built up throughout the book and they’re eventual reveal and
position as the closest thing to a primary antagonist. The ending may be an issue for some, but I
found it emotionally satisfying in spite of the fact that there is a trope at
the end that would usually not work.
Klune provides enough context on this particular world and enough of the
book is devoted to setting up the ending that it works.
Klune’s writing style is interesting. Each of the characters has a distinct voice,
but they are all youthful voices which makes it seem some of the dialogue will
be aging as there are several colloquialisms that are modern, but never enough
to be distracting. Mei, one of Klune’s two
takes on a psychopomp, is a teenager and speaks like a teenager. A lesser writer would have perhaps copied too
much of Neil Gaiman’s Death from The Sandman, with Mei’s general attitude,
but instead of attempting to make the psychopomp’s immortal, they are human
beings tasked with psychopomp duties. Klune
examines the toll this would take on the human psyche, with spirits coming to a
tea shop to move on and accept their death.
The Kubler-Ross model of grief, though acknowledged as not an accurate
model of grief by Klune, is essentially the guiding principle of the novel. The point of the Reapers and Hugo running his
tea shop is to give spirits the chance to move on, and the novel puts the
reader in the mind of one of the souls, Wallace Price. Wallace Price was a lawyer who died of a
heart attack, introduced firing a woman from his firm with this stark indifferent
cruelty which sets the tone for the entire novel as just a bit absurd. Wallace dies at the end of the first chapter
in such a matter of fact way it makes this inciting incident essentially a
footnote which offsets the heavy nature of the fact that Wallace Price has just
died. Wallace’s point of view is also
incredibly stubborn and Klune writes this very human person who has wasted his
life, wasn’t happy, and uses his afterlife as a chance to come to terms with it
and move on. Klune is excellent at having
Wallace not just discover where he went wrong and life and immediately change
for the better, there’s an examination of change taking time, relationships
take time. Hugo and Wallace form a bond
over drinking tea and listening to the stories of the people who go to the tea
shop. The romantic element begins as
incredibly subtle and a lesser writer may have been tempted to tie it into
Wallace’s journey of self-discovery, but Klune makes this romantic relationship
happen with a slow burn. Wallace begins
the experience hostile to basically everyone who can see him and embarrassed of
his situation when certain shenanigans ensue and regresses back to old ways
when he finds himself upset. He is a
human being and he is going to make mistakes on a journey to accept his death and
move on, and ultimately he both does and doesn’t move on. What is wonderful is that all of the characters
are allowed to be human beings, with the good and the bad that comes with it.
There is a saying about three cups of tea bringing
someone from stranger, to honored guest, to family, and that is a perfect
summation of what Under the Whispering Door is doing. It’s an examination of death and living one’s
life to the fullest and drinking tea through an absurdist, non-religious
lens. It was a book I wouldn’t have
picked up weren’t for a recommendation so let this review perhaps do the same
my friend did for me. It is a contender
for one of the best books for the ideas it plays with and the delightful
characters. 10/10.
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