With Instructions for a Funeral, David Means returns in style to the genre that cemented his literary prestige: the story. In this prodigious collection of short stories - intricate, fascinating, deeply poetic and emotional stories that confirm their author as one of the great contemporary North American writers–, Means reflects on adultery, fatherhood, betrayed friendships, class hatred, addiction, loneliness and helplessness in all its elusive mutations, and does so with depth and originality, wit and wisdom, with a signature blend of conciseness and spell, of elegy, existentialism and formal perfectionism.

  Means characters face different types of loss, be it work, their partner or reason; they are adrift beings, without handles, whose lives have been marked by violence or misfortune, and for whom the world has become an insecure, hostile, blurred place. No matter the degree or nature of the suffering of these characters: Means –and with him, the reader– seems to fully trust the redemptive power of the stories. Compared by critics to Denis Johnson, Alice Munro, John Cheever, Tobias Wolff or Raymond Carver, David Means is one of the great masters of short narrative and undoubtedly an essential read.