A review by oldmansimms
The Field by Robert Seethaler

2.0

A collection of stories, as told from the perspectives of the inhabitants of a small-town graveyard. Each individual story is usually fine, but I found it hard to really get into the book as a whole, perhaps because of the lack of connection between the stories -- occasionally you'll get a twinkling of one of the other characters in the background of a story, but for the most part there's less connection than you might expect from a small town where presumably there'd be a lot of overlap. The standout for me was one story with about a man with a gambling addiction and then the following story, from the point of view of his wife, providing a different perspective on the same events, so the lack of other instances of these interconnections felt like a missed opportunity. The graveyard conceit also meant I couldn't help but compare it to Lincoln in the Bardo, which is a hard act to follow; I found myself just itching to read that again instead.