Disintegrations

Alistair McCartney is the author of The End of the World Book, a finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award in Fiction. He teaches creative writing at Antioch University Los Angeles.

• The WeightHoly Cross CemeteryMy Grandma’s ResurrectionHoly Cross Cemetery, Part TwoThe Cycle of ExperienceRobertThe Dead Man’s ThingsOrientationMike Hazelwood and the Floor of the DeadThe California SectionA TourThe BirniesBrushes with DeathDemographicsHeidi’s BookNotable PersonsThe MournersThe Dancing Corpse of Jill YipA Hole in the WorldDisintegrationErin’s TripRegulationsThe University of DisintegrationChris, a RecipeMy CoffinThe Caretaker’s WifeCooper’s StoryA Hole in the GroundOdorsAino’s SongHow to Dispose of MeThe MournerEun Kang and the OceanDeath Dream #1DataMy Grandfather’s HemorrhageImmortalityAn EncounterThe Ballad of Sandra GolvinA Death BookThe Hearses A Note on Sources Acknowledgments

A book that takes possession of you right from the opening and will not let you go. Challenging and gripping, a rumination on death and memory that speaks eloquently to our sense of loss, both personal and communal. The writing is exquisite. In the best possible sense, I know this book will haunt me for the longest time."" - Christos Tsiolkas, author of Barracuda""Engrossing and reverent, The Disintegrations strangles death. A philosophy of the concrete and a reckoning of the ethereal, this novel dreams of all that has become lost in a world of remainders. We who remain may not find relief, but it leaves us dazzled and astonished and brutally satisfied with a gratitude for living."" - Lily Hoang, author of A Bestiary""An uncanny and mesmerizing study of the dread and terror in contemplating death as both remembrance and disappearance, and an intimate reveal of how our fears of erasure are a ghostly double for our awe at being alive."" - Manuel Muñoz, author of What You See in the Dark"A novel that reads like a journal—with all entries meditations on the theme of death.If readers approach this book with conventional expectations (e.g., exposition, complication, climax, denouement), they will be disappointed, for McCartney (The End of the World Book, 2008) forgoes all these elements of fiction. Instead, the narrator—whose voice is impossible to distinguish from that of the author—offers us thoughts on death, dying, corpses, coffins, grave robbers, hearses, cemeteries, and much more." - Kirkus Reviews“The Disintegrations is not just about death, but about the radical, frustrating unknowability of what lies beyond it—as well as about fiction’s power to flirt with the unknowable, if not to illuminate it. Ultimately, it’s about the self’s drive toward self-knowledge.”—Los Angeles Review of Books