Living End

Description

Ellerbee is a conscientious liquor-store owner whose confidence in moral order ends when he is killed during a robbery. Death carries him into a heaven less like fulfillment than an endless obligation to adore God, and his bewilderment opens a darkly comic inquiry into what reward, punishment, and divine justice could possibly mean. The novel widens beyond Ellerbee to encompass his killer, the machinery of the afterlife, and a God exasperated by humanity’s failures and complaints. Stanley Elkin turns theology into abrasive comedy, filling celestial questions with the grievances, salesmanship, vanity, and verbal excess of ordinary life. Living End is a metaphysical satire about suffering and responsibility in a universe whose creator seems as aggrieved as his creations.

Themes