Short take: Lying With the Dead

Wow! If you like dysfunctional family stories (a la Jonathan Frazen's The Corrections), Lying with the Dead by Michael Mewshaw will knock your socks off.  Told alternately from the points of view of three adult children with emotional scars worse than the physical ones left by their mother's beatings, this story will get to you. Far from being sad, however, it's often funny, and it draws you in, making you fond of the three misfits and wondering if the truth can ever be discerned through their controlling mother's lies.

An edited version of this review was published in the December 2009 Indie Next List <http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781590513187/Michael-Mewshaw/Lying-Dead>.