This book and I did not connect on any level. I was “lost in the translation” with the stream of consciousness writing style, and the run on sentences. I could not become invested. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this ARC.

I think I knew everything I needed to know about the novel and the author's writing style when I saw the dedication page: "To Jonathan Franzen." I made it a few pages and mentally checked out. There was no break in the sentences; everything seemed to bleed into each other.

I really liked the IDEAS behind each of these stories, as well as their connecting theme of fatherhood. They all had the potential to be incredibly poignant and rememberable. Unfortunately, the execution of these ideas fell flat somewhere along the way, resulting in a series of hard-to-slog-through stories made overly complicated by an over-abundance of detail and a never-ending supply of extremely long run on sentences that never seemed to have a point.

Where do I even start with this one? All that praise, all the accolades…and yet the book’s barely readable. There are too many puns one can make in relation to the title, suffice it to say Means certainly doesn’t put fun in the funeral. There are meant to be slice of life stories, blue collar to no collar, very realistic sort of thing, low on plot and heavy on details. Yes, you get the idea…but the execution is soporific at best. Rambling protracted sentences, paragraph free, more often than not dialogue free, stream of consciousness tedium. This is actually exactly the sort of thing literary prizes drool over, Means even managed a Man Booker nomination ones, albeit long listed, but as far as sheer reading enjoyment goes there’s none here to be found. Longwinded dreary monotony posing as literature. If read aloud this would produce limp finger snaps instead of a rousing applause. Then again this is probably exactly the sort of thing some readers go crazy for and it just didn’t work for me. Who knows. I can definitely understand what the author was going for, the grace of ordinary an all that, but there are different and considerably superior , not to mention infinitely more readable, ways of getting there. I started this, got fifth or so of the way in and had to put it down, picked it back up two days later determined to finish, completist like, and at no time were there any redeeming qualities discovered for this reading experience. The only good thing about it was its brevity, although it still manages to read long due to dense text and lack of any kind of excitement or reader engagement or pleasure. My only instructions for this book would be avoid at all costs. Thanks Netgalley.

Instructions for a funeral is a collection of short stories by David Means. While the stories were heartfelt and poignant, the writing itself was a little out of character for means. Or at east it seemed so for me. It has been awhile since I have read his work. Certainly for me it’s a 4 out of 5

David Mean's short story collection, Instructions for a Funeral, contains provocative and heart-wrenching stories about fatherhood, relationships, addiction, and regret. The title story, "Instructions for a Funeral" finds William Kenner delineating his last wishes to his lawyer and in so doing relating a betrayal by a friend and an encounter with organized crime. In "Terminal Artist," the narrator learns that a friend he thought had died from complications from surgery during cancer treatment might have instead been the victim of an "angel of mercy." After challenging a rich town boy to a fight for saying he hated Okies, ranch hand Frankie catches the eye of Sarah Breeland who saw in him a complicated kindness.

Two sets of stories are interconnected; the rest stand alone. However, the stories share common themes, one being a sense of fate, destiny, or premonition and how memory can retroactively give certain events or moments significance. For example, one character considers the time immediately before learning his wife had an affair: "On the penultimate day, as I now think of it, the point through which the rest of my life with Sharon would seem to bow, or, rather, bend, so that everything that transpired after that afternoon seemed to lead to the day when Sharon confessed to me, admitted that, yes, she had been seeing X, but that she had broken it off with him, let go of him, was how she put it." Forgiveness also appeared in multiple stories as did the creation of stories. Ultimately, all the stories seemed to have thematic cohesion with the exception of El Morro which didn't fit as well in the collection.

Overall, I liked the writing style, but I did find some devices the author used to be distracting at best, at worst, irritating. In multiple stories, the phrase "I thought, I think" or a close variation is used a total of ten times. Although it points to the fallibility of memory and furthers the theme, the sheer volume of the phrase made it lose meaning. Another frequent device was a parenthetical comment followed by an exclamation point (e.g., "I still despise that phrase!" or "Yes, fucking navels!") which I found off-putting. Finally, the sentences and the paragraphs were unduly long. I found myself frequently rereading because I'd get lost in the prose. As I progressed through the book, I got more accustomed to the style, but it did make for a challenging reading experience.

I wasn't sure if we were to assume the same person narrated all the stories, but in any case, in many stories, the narrator was a writer and meditated on the art of writing (with two stories explicitly about writing). In "Terminal Artist," for example, the narrator reflects, "I’d never be able to use her death in a story. I’d have to find some other way, I thought." Several times, this idea of using the events in the narrative in a story arises. On the one hand, it is interesting to think of how stories are constructed from real-life events and then are manipulated and reformed by the author, but the idea came up so often, it felt overdone and lost effectiveness.

That said, I enjoyed the collection and came away feeling touched. Ultimately, it was through the stories and the retelling that the events gained meaning or, as Means describes it, provides a state of "deeper grace."

I had trouble getting into this... maybe others will like it but just wasn't my style. He appears to be a good writer so maybe just the story itself.

It’s been too long since David Means published a collection of his masterful short stories. “Instructions for a Funeral” demonstrates why his voice is so unique and compelling. A typical Means story like “Fistfight, San Antonio, Sacramento, 1950,” illustrates his modus operandi. A central incident takes place, often of a violent nature and spirals out from there in wholly unexpected ways. Not only does the reader not know the outcome of this isolated brawl between two denizens of a bar, we can’t predict how the narrative will spiral beyond that incident, or assume the perspective of one participant over another, or travel forward in time—all within the same story. It’s what Means has been doing for years and remains effective, thought-provoking and expands the conventional dimensions of short fiction. “The Tree Line, Kansas, 1934,” is, for me, the highest achievement of Means’ techniques. Two FBI agents in the 1930s - one seasoned, one young and impulsive—keep watch on a Kansas farmhouse, waiting for a violent criminal’s likely return there with his gang. Means drops us in the moment, and builds suspense about the outcome with each sentence, while also taking the narrative years ahead into the future and one character’s troubled retirement years. The way the story ends is close to perfect—and completely satisfying—and has resonated with me for years, since it first appeared in the New Yorker. Everyone interested in short fiction should read Instructions for a Funeral, but it will be particularly gratifying to long-time fans of David Means’ work.

Overall, I liked Instructions for a Funeral enough to finish it, but it was not in any means an easy read. At times I found myself skimming over sentences that, although beautifully crafted, seemed superfluous to the story. His writing felt stagnant at points, in some stories more than others, and I struggled at times to grasp what was happening, having to go back several times to reorient myself.
However, I emphasized with Means as a writer myself — lines such as “if I could get even a fraction of this down in some kind of pure form, I would be able to lean back, rest, and simply live in the world,” were poignant — and I felt as if I could grasp at least one of the reasons he was writing this collection.
Instructions for a Funeral had several great stories in it (“The Terminal Artist” being my personal favorite), though it was interspersed with sections that felt more like Means’ own personal musings rather than stories, which slowed things down quite a bit. Maybe I will try reading this again when it is published and I am in a bit of a different mindset. I think that dedicating some more time to it in a reread would add some value.