I did, in fact, enjoy reading this book, as long as I didn't think too much about the overall storyline and focused mostly on the anecdotes and descriptions. It tells the story of Toloki, a professional mourner who, disillusioned with his life in South Africa, travels to the United States in search of mourning. He finds himself in a small town in Ohio, living for the better part of the book with the Quigley family: Ruth, the neoconservative matriarch of the family; Obed, her son, whom Toloki saves from sexual harassment charges at the start of the book; Mahlon, her silent husband who smiles as he sits over his garden in which nothing but gnomes and statues grow; and Orpah, her reclusive daughter who begins to haunt Toloki's dreams. The book mostly concerns itself with the day-to-day life of Toloki and the Quigleys, told in first-person, present tense. Their story is also interspersed with legends about the origins of the Quigleys, from escaped slaves in the Civil War to later Irish immigrants.

Only after finishing the novel and realizing that I don't feel much different having read it do I realize that it has a definite sense of being part of something greater, making me wish I had known it was a sequel to Mda's earlier Ways of Dying before I read it. The fact that it seems clear even on it's own that it covers new ground and retools ideas presented in the earlier book makes me think the two books must work very well together. On the whole, it was an enjoyable read, however, even if there were some things left unexplained that I assume I would have known had I read the previous book. ( )