It is quite physical: The bodies here are mostly old, ill, or dying, or weakened by stress, compassion, and mourning. The aim is fending off, keeping out death while insistently dealing with it. Remarkable is the contrast between the huge cold dome of the crematorium in Bucharest where Valeria, the mother of Corde’s Romanian wife Minna (the Corde character is the Dean of the novel’s title) is being cremated, and the heat of the fire down below: ‘Corde, who had come down shivering, now felt the hot weight of the fedora … He tried by shallow breathing to keep out the corpse smoke, protect his lungs. The heat made you feel all your organs like paper.’ There are other similes, as when Corde watches the closed eyes of his wife’s stricken mum, who is approaching death, and notices: ‘They made scanning movements under the skin…they filled out the lids (an involuntary comparison) like ravioli.’ After the funeral—it turns out the urn, the death container, doesn’t fit the hole—, there is ‘the traditional cake, white and creamy, huge, swimming loosely and quivering on its platter … Dincutza politely offered Corde a taste, but he wanted no part of this death sweet.’ The book includes the device of quasi documentary articles Corde has written about the horrors of the prison system and the judicial system, and revolves round a murder involving a student where he has taken an unpopular stance. There is a glance at a redemptive figure, Lydia, the wife of the man murdered. ‘The Cordes had a spare room… and Corde had suggested to Minna that Lydia should stay with them.’ That does not happen; the novel, pensive and dark, has no room for such play. Spangler, an childhood friend and now a savvy operator with access to the White House, meets Corde to talk politics. He wears a bag and impulsively pulls out his shirt to show it: ‘Yes, there was the square plastic envelope. Something dark and warm was inside.’ All these parcels point at death, or its temporary containment. Sex is but a memory; we read Spangler stating, ‘In this condition, what woman will sleep with me?’ Back in the US, there is another redemptive body, that of large, cherished dog encountered at the wedding party of Corde’s sister: ‘It helped to fondle the Great Dane when the animal came nudging and sighing.’