Inscriptions for Headstones

Literary Nonfiction. Thirty short essays, crafted as epitaphs, each one unfolding in a single sentence. "In these terrifically clever essays, composed of memories, anxieties, pop-cultural artifacts, and genuine moments of profundity, comedy, and pathos, Matthew Vollmer proves himself a master of the long sentence and a crack reporter of received forms. INSCRIPTIONS FOR HEADSTONES employs death, ingeniously, as a vessel for exuberant life—the world it presents is rich and real; familiar, yet always surprising."—J. Robert Lennon