PositiveFull Stop\"Despite the centrality of death to the book, its tone is more poignant and affecting than mournful and depressing. It’s the sort of prose that may make you cry (at least it made me cry) but over its lyrical beauty and spot-on turns of phrase rather than the tragedy of what has taken place ... [Vogel\'s] style is spare and unaffected, often with a dash of wry; no superfluity here. Both narration and dialogue come off as conversational, casual, off-handed, so natural as to be effortless ... One of many finely crafted aspects of this novella is its hazy yet undeniable locatedness. While not emblematic of Los Angeles with the intensity or granular specificity of [other novels], Death and Other Holidays embeds itself deeply in Los Angeles throughout.\
