I spent the last 50-or-so pages of Alix Straus' novel, "The Joy of Funerals" anxiously awaiting the end so I could jump into Jon Krakauer's "Under the Banner of Heaven."

"The Joy of Funerals" starts out with a morbid short story about a widow who fucks men she meets in the graveyard as a way to reconnect with her dead husband. The scene is shocking enough to grip my attention although I already suspect it's a gimick. The next short story is about a woman with a crack-pot father who died while playing hide-and-go-seek at the local zoo. The woman grows up having a fetish for criminals, which culminates in her fucking a man who robs her at a grocery store. All because she can't get over her father's death, supposedly.

There are six or seven more stories about death and how it makes six or seven other women do crazy, illegal, deviant things. The book ends with a long chapter about a woman named Nina. Nina is a loser who attends funerals of people she's never met just to feel some kind of connection. She ends up meeting all of the women in the previous short stories at the funerals of their loved ones and finds joy in their misery. At this point, you've pretty much figured out "The Joy of Funerals."

I'm happy to report I'm faring better with "Under the Banner of Heaven."