Life Events

A woman at a crossroads learns the only way to reclaim her life is to help others die.

What if Evelyn’s whole life has been a mistake? At 37, she’s on the verge of divorce and anxiously awaiting everyone she loves dying on her. She combats her existential crisis by avoiding her husband and wandering the freeways of California looking for an escape before discovering a collective of exit guides. Evelyn enrolls in training courses where she learns to provide companionship and a final exit for terminally ill patients looking for a conscious departure. She meets Daphne, a dying woman still full of life; Lawrence, an aging porn king; and Daniel, who seems too young to die, and whom she can’t help but fall for. Each client allows her a chance to access her own grief and confront the self-destructive ways she suppresses her pain. When Evelyn travels through the Southwest to an afterlife convention, she must finally face her complicated relationship with her alcoholic father and reckon with her life choices. Life Events is about planning your next phase when you see your past as a failure and your future as an impossible obligation. Sensitively observed and darkly funny, Karolina Waclawiak’s breakout novel follows a woman searching for answers and intimacy while facing profound questions about how we live and die today.