RaveThe Rumpus... while Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead contains humor and discussions of death aplenty, it would be off the mark entirely to say the takeaway of Emily Austin’s debut novel is that death is funny. Morbid humor exists for a reason: to poke fun at our inevitable ends and lighten its emotional load. But the humor in the novel can’t quite be called \'morbid,\' either. Austin has done something remarkable—she’s written an utterly irreverent story with a narrator who’s fixated on death, but death is never the punchline and someone’s passing (or the thought of their passing) is never treated with anything but the utmost tenderness. And it’s really, really funny ... Austin approaches the subject of death in a wry, humorous way that doesn’t diminish the endless anxiety it provokes in all of us. It’s not that death itself is funny, but the strings of panicked thoughts and overreactions are so relatable that it’s hard not to see our own anxieties here on the page, and there’s humor in that recognition.
