Title: The Celebrants
Author: Steven Rowley
Publisher: G.P. Putnam’s Sons
Publication date: May 30, 2023
Length: 320 pages
Genre: Contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of the publisher via NetGalley
Rating:

The shortest of short reviews: I loved this book.

Want to know more? Okay, here goes…

The Celebrants is a funny, human, touching story of lasting friendship and chosen family, as well as a deeply impactful reminder to show love and appreciation to the people we care about while we still can.

In The Celebrants, a group of six best friends attending Berkeley in the mid-90s becomes a bereaved group of five after Alec dies tragically shortly before graduation. Numb, the friends gather after his funeral and talk about all the things they wish they’d told Alec while he was alive.

And so a pact is born: The five friends vow to hold “living funerals” for each other, to be held whenever someone needs a reminder that they’re loved and valued. Each person can trigger the pact when they feel they need it, and they each get one (and only one).

As they move into adulthood and into their own lives, the pact is largely forgotten, until almost twenty years later, when Marielle summons everyone back to the Big Sur house we’re they’d congregated after Alec’s death. With her marriage falling apart, feeling adrift and without purpose, Marielle calls upon the group to remind her of all that she has to live for.

From there, we see the group reconvene over the years at various crisis points in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. The gatherings are sentimental, funny, and ultimately, meaningful in different ways. Each person may need something different at their funeral, but the group is there to celebrate them no matter what.

I can’t say enough good things about The Celebrants. I came to really love the characters, both as individuals and as members of a friend group that’s based on love even at its snarkiest and most critical. The book is written with compassion and humor, and flows quickly from one funeral to the next, interspersed with the “now” storyline that drives the momentum of the novel as a whole.

In fact, the only discordant note for me was a scene where the group does mushrooms before going on an outing, which was probably meant to be much funnier than I found it and came across as fairly cringey.

Other than that, the writing is funny and emotional, a hard balance to pull off, but accomplished here incredibly well. The message of the book is powerful and left me thinking quite a bit — it’s all about celebrating life and the important people in it while they’re here, not waiting to tell people how and why they matter to us, because there’s no guarantee that there will be time later on.

None of them would leave this Earth without knowing that they were loved.

So much of this book resonated with me — holding onto lifelong friends, relishing small moments, sharing and facing difficult truths, and making space for the important people in our lives, even when we feel busy or overwhelmed ourselves.

I ended up listening to the audiobook of The Celebrants, which is narrated by the author. I’ve often found author narrations less than satisfactory, but not so in this case — he does a wonderful job of bringing the characters to life and conveying the humor and flavor of their banter and conversations.

I highly recommend The Celebrants. Don’t miss this lovely book.