UNDER THE WHISPERING DOOR: BOOK REVIEW
I start each TJ Klune book with a few expectations in mind: queer characters, Klune’s trademark sense of humor, the found family trope, and a warm, fuzzy feeling inside by the time I’ve turned the last page. Under the Whispering Door delivered on all four – so much so, that I almost forgot that I was reading a story about death.
When Wallace Price, an uptight and callous lawyer, dies suddenly of a heart attack on his office floor, no one is all too upset (except Wallace, of course). Having alienated his ex-wife and coworkers with his greed and general unkindness, the funeral is hardly the touching memorial Wallace feels it should be. After Mei, a young woman who claims to be a reaper, shows up at the funeral to take Wallace to the afterlife, he is forced to confront his death – and life – in ways he never imagined.
Mei brings Wallace to Charon’s Crossing, a cozy little tea shop in the countryside run by Hugo, a kind-hearted man who ferries ghosts from this life to the next. Although Hugo and Mei are the only living residents of the space, the shop is also occupied by Nelson and Apollo, the ghosts of Hugo’s grandfather and dog respectively. As a ferryman, Hugo helps the deceased come to terms with death before leading them beyond the door on the fourth floor, onto whatever comes next.
It’s almost impossible to sympathize with Wallace in the early stages of the story. While his inhospitality masks a deep loneliness, that solitude is completely his fault, having spent his entire adult life absorbed with little more than money and his own success. After the first chapter alone, I thoroughly believed there was no way for me to ever like Wallace Price.
Klune proved me wrong. As Wallace begins to befriend the residents of Charon’s Crossing and reflects on a life not-so-well lived, his attitude and values change. Readers will grow to like Wallace not only because he develops a genuine desire to better himself, but also because he acts on that desire. When faced with the consequences of his actions in life, he endeavors to be kinder in death, without an underlying motive for praise or forgiveness.
As heartwarming as it is to watch Wallace grow to see these acquaintances as friends (and, in Hugo’s case, something more), Under the Whispering Door is still a story about death. It’s built on grief, and it runs like an undercurrent through every page. As Wallace learns to accept his own death – and really, the life he lived – he also encounters people dealing heavily with loss, whether it’s their own life or a loved one’s. At Charon’s Crossing, he meets a woman struggling to cope with the loss of her daughter, a young man angry at his own murder, and a ghost grieving not for his own death, but the death of his partner.
But for as much as the story is about death, it’s also about what it means to live, and what it means to continue living when someone dear to you is gone. The crux of the story isn’t sad at all; instead, it attempts to find meaning in everyone’s life and eventual death. At times, the conversations around this topic were overdrawn and saccharine, and didn’t particularly add anything new to the conversation about death, Klune managed it in a way that it still felt fresh and engaging. The story was heartwarming, often laugh-out-loud funny, and left me with a smile. And, because it’s a fantasy novel, Klune was able to explore common themes in new ways, which meant it didn’t feel overdone or cliché.
When I first read Klune’s prior adult fantasy novel, The House in the Cerulean Sea (easily one of my favorite books of all time), I likened it to a cozy blanket and a warm mug of tea on a rainy day. If that was Cerulean Sea, then Under the Whispering Door was a hug from a loved one you haven’t seen in a long time – a bit sad because of the time that has passed, but comforting and warm all the same.