Mostly Dead Things Summary
Kristen Arnett

Mostly Dead Things Overview

In Kristin Arnett's debut novel, Mostly Dead Things, she braves new structural and narrative territory as she tells the story of the complicated and dynamic Morton family and their Central Florida taxidermy business. Through Jessa Morton's first-person narrative, Arnett explores the entrapping nature of grief and loss. After Jessa's father commits suicide and her one love abandons her, Jessa hides in her work at the shop, surrounded by the dead and haunting figures of her taxidermy animals. Mostly Dead Things is a brazen exploration of themes of sexuality, death, and family, those facets of the human experience the individual can neither deny nor avoid.