I am always a fan of a good title, and this one works on a couple of levels. Nick Spalding has created an interesting premise for discussing life and death and grief in this book that documents the interaction of two people who have recently lost loved ones and are having an impossible time moving past the experience.

Alice’s husband Joe died of a heart attack in his early 40s, and she didn’t make it to the hospital in time. She has a feeling that something or someone messed up when Joe came into the emergency room for treatment, because why else would such a young man go like that? Ben’s brother Harry, a rising young surgeon, was diagnosed with leukemia and succumbed rather abruptly, and Ben, who is struggling with his need to live up to the rest of his family (they’re all doctors), is especially bereft because Harry was the one who was there for him when his parents were absent or too busy for their younger son. One day, the two mourners visit the cemetery where their people are buried, and the coincidence of the grave sites being closely adjacent brings them together in an oddly freeing ritual of friendship.

There is a certain comedic element to the book, based on Harry’s last wish left for Ben in his will. Harry asks Ben to visit the cemetery yearly, dressed each time as a different character dictated by Harry and carrying out a ritual that is meaningful to the two of them. So on that first fateful day when Ben meets Alice, she is prodded out of her focus on her own all-encompassing grief by the unusual experience of sharing the cemetery with a man dressed in a Kermit the Frog costume, standing at attention and humming the song “We Are the Champions” under his breath. Once Ben manages to convince her that he’s not a weirdo but rather the victim of his sadistic dead brother’s practical joke, the two of them have a meaningful conversation about their losses and agree to meet up at the graves on the same day each year to check in on each other.

This goes on for some time, and the once-a-year encounter showcases for Ben and Alice and also for the reader how uneven is the movement away from grief and how prolonged it can be, far beyond the expectations of those who haven’t experienced bereavement firsthand.

I liked the characters and felt that for the most part their development over the once-yearly visits was believable. I would have liked a little more detail about each of them than the bits they were able to convey in that annual conversation with one another, but the characters did develop and grow and remain interesting. Their respective resolutions felt a tiny bit facile to me, but over all I empathized with them and found the story engrossing, if not riveting. Er, ribbeting?