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Back Life Events
Chapters (49)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraph
  5. 1.
  6. 2.
  7. 3.
  8. 4.
  9. 5.
  10. 6.
  11. 7.
  12. 8.
  13. 9.
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  15. 11.
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  18. 14.
  19. 15.
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  21. 17.
  22. 18.
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  30. 26.
  31. 27.
  32. 28.
  33. 29.
  34. 30.
  35. 31.
  36. 32.
  37. 33.
  38. 34.
  39. 35.
  40. 36.
  41. 37.
  42. 38.
  43. 39.
  44. 40.
  45. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  46. Also by Karolina Waclawiak
  47. Praise for Life Events
  48. A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  49. Newsletter Sign-up

My mother died on September 22, 2019, just as I was finishing work on this book. As my brother beautifully wrote in his eulogy for her, “She was a true matriarch, a Jupiter in stature, and we were simply the moons lucky enough to orbit her, to be shaped by her gravity, and without her we are left with a space impossible to fill or inhabit.”

I could not have captured the immense loss of her any better.

Also by Karolina Waclawiak

ALSO BY KAROLINA WACLAWIAK

How to Get into the Twin Palms

The Invaders

Praise for Life Events

Praise for Life Events

“The characters in [Waclawiak’s] three excellent novels share a similar honest intensity. They cut the fat away from life with the sharpest blade. They show the world as it is, in its unease and ugliness, its loneliness but also its strange beauty … [Life Events is] as clear-eyed and precise a look at grief as I’ve ever read.”

—Diane Cook, BOMB

“As the ‘exit guides’ lead their clients through preparations—compiling lists of passwords, writing letters of forgiveness—Waclawiak gives us a sidelong examination of death. Vivid portraits of those who have chosen to end their lives leave a lasting impression, as do Evelyn’s long drives in the California desert.”

—The New Yorker

“The obstacle between Evelyn and happiness is not a grand tragedy; it is the accumulated weight of the small tragedies we all endure and carry with us. Contemplative and complex.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Every page of this novel is a point of no return; once you’ve read Karolina Waclawiak’s Life Events, you will never see life, death, grief, and healing the same way. Waclawiak’s mesmerizing storytelling, both painfully funny and joyfully despairing, immediately grabs hold of you and takes you on a ride. And this highway has no exits.”

—Saeed Jones, author of How We Fight for Our Lives

“Life Events is a hypnotic novel that beautifully grapples with fundamental questions about how to die and how to live. Karolina Waclawiak transports the reader into the streets of Los Angeles, the deserts of the Southwest, the apartments of the dying, and a woman’s life at a moment of profound change. Filled with compelling provocative details about the work of ‘exit guides’ for terminally ill people, Life Events is both a midlife bildungsroman and a meditation on self-determination. I can’t stop thinking about this novel.”

—Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State

“Brilliant and exhilarating. Every page of Life Events shines with insight, feeling, and astonishing candor, and not a sentence rings false. I love this novel.”

—R. O. Kwon, author of The Incendiaries