museum heist grief book
R E Katz's And Then The Gray Heaven is 5.2 x 8.3 x 0.75 inches & 148 pages.
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There’s nothing like a heist, and nothing nothing like a museum heist. And Then The Gray Heaven, a graceful lamenting little book, culminates in not one but a few museum heists.
Jules, mourning the freak accident death of their partner B a few weeks beforehand, flees on a road trip to bury B’s ashes in places where B worked, including in the dirt of natural history museum dioramas, below the taxidermied deer, etc. It has the danger and slick tension of a heist, but it replaces greed of taking with the mournful act of leaving. I’ve been thinking about this as a framework for grief and it just hurts my heart! It seems right!
And Then The Gray Heaven was also a Purse Book Gals-On-The-Go Official Book Club Book. Here’s what the gals thought:
“sweet, sad, a little subtle sometimes, but so goodly weird” - Em W.
“The only thing I come away with thinking is that I wish these characters well! I really grew to care for them. It’s also always nice when queer people get out of Florida in the end.” — Sara
“It manages to be a book about grief that resists being uplifting, while it has a really moving resolution.” — H. C.
And then here is a phrase, split over two pages, about which we all (almost!) agreed:
