SOURCE: Levi, Jonathan. “The Origin of Species.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (16 April 2000): 19.

In the following review, Levi offers a positive assessment of Being Dead.

“These are the instruments of sex outdoors. You need good weather, somewhere dry to stretch out far from dogs and wasps, and no sense of the ridiculous.” No matter that they were a pair of homely zoologists at the uglier end of their 50s, Joseph and Celice had the good fortune of a sunny Tuesday with no classes to teach and a stretch of dune above Baritone Bay, empty of canine and insect witness to their middle-aged pleasure. Lucky enough not to see their murderer, Joseph and Celice were unaware of the petty thief armed with a handful of granite, and so died within the lissom grass and sand, Joseph's hand grasping Celice's ankle, with no sense of the ridiculous.

These are the...