Grief changes everything. So does friendship. 2025 Readers' Favorite Book Award Winner (Fiction-Realistic) Winner of Three Firebird International Book Awards (Most Likely to Make You Cry, Death & Dying, and Best Risk-Taker) His family just died. So why is Calvin obsessing over his dishwasher, his pool, and a thousand other mundane details? If you’ve ever suffered catastrophic loss, you already know — even if you don’t realize that you do. And if — or when — faith fails you, where do you go? A Pleasant Fiction is a raw, emotionally intimate novelistic memoir about love, memory, and the uneven terrain of grief — where meaning is elusive and closure never comes cleanly. Told in nonlinear fragments, it balances emotional weight with moments of warmth, dark humor, and quiet insight. Along the way, one quiet truth emerges: Forgive them. And forgive yourself. ★★★★★ A Pleasant Fiction: A Novelistic Memoir by Javier De Lucia is a stark and intimate exploration of loss, memory, and the uneasy terrain of healing after tragedy. At its center is Calvin, a man reeling from the death of his family. Instead of collapsing into expected rituals of mourning, his attention veers toward the ordinary—the dishwasher's hum, the sheen of water in the pool, the trivial rhythms of daily life that both dull and intensify the void. Structured in nonlinear fragments, the narrative drifts between piercing sorrow, moments of unexpected warmth, and flashes of sardonic humor. De Lucia portrays grief not as a neat progression through stages but as a jagged, unpredictable sprawl across time and recollection. Calvin's voice is at once raw and incisive, revealing how absurd it feels to obsess over the mundane even as those obsessions provide a lifeline. What emerges is not a story of easy resolution but of fragile persistence. Through its fractured lens, A Pleasant Fiction suggests that forgiveness—toward others, and perhaps most painfully, toward oneself—becomes the only way forward. The result is a memoir that is unsparing, darkly funny, and ultimately luminous in its search for meaning amid loss. Javier De Lucia paints hugely complex emotions with words through simple but effective sentences, resulting in a raw and beautifully fractured exploration of grief. Effectively balancing unbearable sorrow with moments of dark humor and warmth, the novel sweeps readers into every detail, no matter how humdrum or extreme. De Lucia writes with searing honesty and lyrical precision that's devoted to authentically capturing the messy truth of loss without any false sentimentality. In the middle of it all is Calvin's obsessive focus on the mundane, which feels startlingly authentic and deeply moving. The plot is well crafted with a non-linear structure that cleverly mirrors the unpredictable nature of memory itself. The storyline flows smoothly despite the deliberately disjointed nature, showcasing an author with a talent for maintaining total control of their story and crafting a tale that's at once intimate, unsettling, and profoundly relatable. As De Lucia transforms personal loss into a universal reflection on love and endurance, so the reader may well find themselves reflecting on their own lives and decisions through Calvin's words and actions. A powerful follow-up that stands firmly on its own, A Pleasant Fiction is a strikingly intimate exploration of what it means to lose, and what it takes to keep living. --K.C. Finn for Indies Today ★★★★★ In A Pleasant Fiction , Javier De Lucia delivers the emotionally resonant second act to his two-part coming-of-age story, continuing the story of Calvin McShane where The Wake of Expectations left off. If the first book chronicles adolescence in all its messy, comic glory—equal parts coming-of-age tale and Gen X time capsule— A Pleasant Fiction is its older, wiser, and more painful counterpart. Together, the two novels form a sweeping narrative arc that spans the giddy freedom of youth through the disillusionment and hard-earned wisdom of middle age. De Lucia's central theme in A Pleasant Fiction is grief, but not grief as an isolated event. This is grief as a condition of life, one that shapes identity and outlook. The book becomes a study in how people carry grief, how they adapt to it, and what they do with the space it leaves behind. But grief here is never cheapened into sentimentality. Calvin's decisions are morally murky, especially as they pertain to his disabled brother Jared. That's what makes De Lucia's work so affecting: the absence of clear heroes or villains. Just people, burdened with love and trying not to collapse under it. Jared is more than a side character; he is the axis around which the McShane family orbits. His needs shape their routines, his presence defines their household, and his vulnerability tests the limits of their resilience. De Lucia treats Jared not as a symbol, but as a person. For Calvin, Jared represents both the weight of responsibility and the purity of unco