The subject is death and dying. The writer addresses it head on, as did Tolstoy in The Death of Ivan Ilysch. Robert Cormier's first published novel (1960). (Because he could see the world so well through the eyes of his kids growing up in the 1960s and1970s, he later became best known as a YA novel writer.) The reader follows the states of consciousness in vivid detail, states of consciousness that vary and undulate. I relate strongly to this book since the context is a working class large Catholic family. Familiar territory, even if the children are a generation preceding my own. I had read a number of his short stories involving the same family, which was a great warm up to the novel. I strongly recommend. ( )

Now and at the Hour by Robert Cormier (1991)