Death's a Bitch

With all the poignance and wit of Sally Rooney, and a plot as irresistibly outlandish as My Sister, the Serial Killer, twenty-two-year-old Eloise Rodger has delivered one of the year's boldest and most captivating debuts, an unforgettable novel about the unbreakable bond between two sisters and a deal with Death that might unravel both of their lives for good.

"Rodger's sentences are spring-loaded with invention, and the grief and the love here feel almost unbearably real.” —Karen Russell, author of The Antidote

Marcie had been gone for three weeks when I met Death.

Eighteen-year-old Aggie should be spending her weekends pub-crawling through freshman year and secretly hating all her new friends. Instead, she’s passing her Sundays in a room with stick-on flowers and padded table corners, visiting her younger sister, Marcie, who has been placed in a full-time psychiatric facility for a serious eating disorder. Aggie feels lost without her best friend, and she’d do anything for Marcie to get better. . . .

Then, one evening, the Grim Reaper appears in the dim light of Aggie’s bedroom—not a hooded man with a scythe but an elegantly dressed, impossibly frustrated mother. And she wants to make a deal. If Aggie delivers on Death’s unusual demands, Marcie will come home safely. So, there isn’t much choice. Aggie accepts.

Death’s a Bitch is a Faustian tale with a beating heart; a love story between two sisters; an exploration of loss, sickness and siblinghood; and a novel about growing up, letting go and learning to live with your mortality.  It’s a wickedly clever debut from a prodigiously gifted young writer that asks the ultimate question: how far would you go to save the life of someone you loved?