Weepers - by Peter Mendelsund

Book Synopsis

A messianic tale about a group of professional mourners--a darkly funny novel of grief, mystery and redemption from the author of The Delivery.

Ed is a weeper. A professional weeper.

He's a card-carrying member of an eccentric union hired to cry at funerals, wakes, services and burials. It's an odd job, but his services are sorely needed these days, as the town, the region, the country as a whole has become more or less numb. No one is able to summon a shred of human emotion whatsoever. Not anymore. (What'd be the point? The world's already gone to hell.)

So there's always work for Ed and his colleagues. But all those cries can wear a man down, and the tears don't flow quite like they used to, even for a consummate pro like Ed.

Then one morning, a stranger comes to town. A scrawny kid with no belongings, no parents, no name, no past. And at precisely the moment of his arrival, people begin to experience something new. Something strange. An onslaught of unbidden feelings, unfamiliar feelings, too many feelings

A surrealist story of mourning and messiahs, deserts and droughts, cowboys and junkies, miracles and mass hysteria, the lure of despair and the solace of friendship. Peter Mendelsund's Weepers is a novel for this age: our age of anesthesia and anger.

Review Quotes

"Sweetly wistful . . . Weepers is funny and forlorn in equal measure, and [the narrator's] voice remains endearing to the book's inquisitive (and, inevitably, woebegone) ending. Is profound change possible? Can there be consolation for those who are plighted to their sadness? As Ed wonders, 'who weeps for the weepers?'"
--Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"Mendelsund suffuses his meditation on performative grief with inspired stylistic flourishes, evoking the cadences of Donald Antrim and the baroque drama of Flannery O'Connor. As the story builds toward a violent showdown between the mourners and the town, the reader will be entranced by its surreal language and bizarre logic. This is astonishing."
--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Ed's voice throughout the novel is darkly funny, wry, perceptive--charming . . . [There is] playful wit and music of the prose. Stylish, witty, surreal--a meditation on the power of emotion to bind us in an ever-drier, less hospitable world."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Humane and darkly comic . . . Throughout, Mendelsund raises often unanswerable questions, but though Weepers is the sort of novel that resists the easy consolation of a neat ending, that doesn't detract from its appeal. Reflective and atmospheric, it's a meaningful expression of our attempt to grapple with some of life's most profound mysteries."
--Shelf Awareness

About the Author