On the HahaFiction shelf
The Best Way to Bury Your Husband
Audiobook available · 12 hr 21 min
Sally has killed her abusive husband with a skillet and is terrified of losing her children. During the Covid lockdown, she discovers three other women facing a similar crisis. Their new friendship comes with a shared task: concealing four bodies.
From the publisher’s blurb
“Four new friends. Four dead bodies. One big problem . . .”Read the full description at Penguin, publisher description
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What makes it funny?
The women need the reassurance of a self-help group and the practical planning of a criminal operation. Their Lockdown Ladies’ Burial Club offers solidarity while its members work out where the husbands will go. Readers in book groups praise the dark humor and joke along with the concealment premise.
The comedy at work
Casale uses an openly improbable meeting of four survivors to make collective problem-solving funny. The women can help each other with difficulties that would be unbearable alone, even when the immediate difficulty is a corpse. The story keeps its sympathy with them as they begin rebuilding their lives.
Try this if…
This combines crime suspense with friendship between women whose circumstances have isolated them. It suits readers who can enjoy a body-disposal problem as black comedy while taking the abuse behind it seriously.
Good to know
Domestic violence, killing and body disposal are central. The setup includes a threat against a daughter who has come out. Reader responses to the pace vary: some struggled partway through, while others found it a quick, entertaining read.
A few distinguishing details
- Four survivors and four bodies to conceal
- A lockdown self-help group with a burial problem
More funny crime & thriller
Sources & further reading
- Apple Books unabridged audiobook
Book information
- Penguin Random House editions
Publisher
- UK publisher
Publisher
- Reader discussion
Reader discussion
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