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The Afterlife by Donald Antrim is the story of a son's love for - and fear of - his "operatically suicidal" alcoholic mother. Louanne Antrim was a woman bent on self-destruction, even as the men in her life (father, husband, son) tried their best to save her (and then, at last - faced with certain failure - were forced to give up the attempt).

Reading Antrim's writing is like swallowing shards of diamonds (or how I imagine it would be, not that I've done it) - the writing is that clean, that polished, that penetrating, and that painful. As Antrim tries to make sense of his own lifelong depression and anxiety, he manages to make you want to laugh and cry, frequently over the same sentence. The first chapter, when, following the death of his mother he tries to buy himself a new bed (just how Freudian can you get?), is, all by itself, worth the price of the book.