Nov 20, 2023
Daniel McInerny joins the podcast to discuss
his novel, The Good Death of Kate Montclair, the modern
cult of authenticity, the desire for control that tempts people to
euthanasia, and what it truly means to accept your death.
Publisher’s description for the novel:
Kate Montclair is
dying. She has arrived at late middle age loveless, childless, and
having failed to achieve the career dreams of her youth. Now
diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, she sees the next
fourteen months of suffering as an intolerable prospect. Kate is
desperate—not only for a miracle cure, but for some sense that her
life, and life itself, amounts to something more than a
catastrophe.
When she sees an
advertisement for the Washington, DC Death Symposium, Kate
investigates and learns that the monthly discussion group is led by
none other than the idealistic and inimitable Adele Schraeder, an
old friend she has not seen since their teaching days in Rome. On
Adele’s advice, Kate soon decides to break Virginia law with an
assisted suicide.
But Adele
Schraeder is not the only person Kate reconnects with at the Death
Symposium. Also present is Benedict Aquila, another friend from
Rome, who has been living in DC while nursing his mother through
her final illness. And then there is the strange, mentally ill
street woman sitting in the corner, drawing pad in hand. Who is
she? She is the Ariadne’s thread that will lead Kate on a journey
back through the years to her youth, forcing her to come to grips
with the love affair she had with a married man and the catastrophe
that took his life.
Links
Daniel McInerny, The Good Death of Kate
Montclair
https://chrismpress.com/product/the-good-death-of-kate-montclair/
The Comic Muse http://www.danielmcinerny.substack.com
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