Miserably funny story of a death. Maybe I have read too much of this kind of stuff, but I didn't think this book worth the accolades that been heaped on it. It wasn't helped by the cover Picador chose for the edition i have, a beautiful photograph of dawn breaking on a lake surrounded by trees, but rendered fussy and twee by the fragile bracts superimposed in the corners. Presumably, the cover was chosen by someone who was aware of the book's title, but had not read it - since the whole point is the lack of grace in the desperate, harrowing, almost obscene end of the lives in this book, and in the guilt-ridden, pitifully honest autobiographical reflections of the hapless all-too-human narrator. That description actually makes it sound better than it is, but the title is definitely intended to be ironic. ( )