I'm an avid horror fan, but The Death of Ivan Ilych scared me. Tolstoy hits the nail on the head with this unsettling line from the opening scene:

“... the mere fact of the death of a near acquaintance aroused, as usual, in all who heard of it, the complacent feeling that, "it is he who is dead and not I.”

Before we even meet our titular character in life, we are introduced to him in death through the eyes of those who knew him. And what we learn is that while they all liked him, and mourn him, their lives will go on while his will not, and that this very aliveness is both monstrous and understandable. The world will not stop turning just because you have died.

Confronting mortality and dying in all its uncomfortable trappings is what The Death of Ivan Ilych is all about. It is about the terror of not being able to fully comprehend what it means to die. The helplessness, the lack of dignity, the pain, the exhaustion, and yes, even the acceptance are all interwoven and muddled through by Ivan Ilyich as he contemplates the same unsettling conjecture Stephen King would struggle with a century later: "sometimes, dead is better."

This is not a book to be picked up lightly as I am convinced that no one who reads it will ever be the same.