To Receive My Services You Must Be Dying and Alone

by Kathryn Kruse

Call it Absurdist Realism. Call it Midwestern Gothic. Call it a book of stories that get a hold of your head and heart. Whatever you call it, To Receive My Services You Must Be Dying and Alone takes us to the edge of lived experience and guides us to look back in wonder at essential elements of humanness: hope, grief, confusion, joy. While the worlds and characters in each of these stories arrive fresh and distinct---A woman drives through Central Illinois returning lost baggage, accompanied by her mother’s toothless mini-poodle; a couple finds their lives weighed with 3D printings of their baby’s fetus after a miscarriage; a rag-tag group spends every day together in an abandoned and repurposed pharmacy, the shelves still filled with out-dated stock, while they up-skill for promised minimum-wage jobs---we grab hold of a throughline: the book spills over with people building and breaking idols to find love and survival where they can. And we cheer them on at each step.

Genres: Short Stories

214 pages, Paperback

Published February 17, 2025

About the author

Kathryn Kruse is the director of Residency on the Farm, an interdisciplinary artists’ residency program. After sojourns around the world and the US, she now lives back near the shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago where she teaches quite a lot.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Grief and grieving on an acid trip! With so much of our daily news inundated with sorrow and pain, the stories in this collection hit at just the right time. When reality becomes broken to the point where everything feels like fiction, the stories in To Receive My Services You Must Be Dying and Alone, provide the reader with an emotional experience that helps to process it all. These stories vibrate with a sardonic humor that we can deeply appreciate in the post-2020 world. After reading a story from this collection, it's like you look at sorrow with a new lens. It's not about "coping strategies" or "mindfulness" (although those things are good to do), it's about how we understand our existence and how we exude pain even as we embrace in love. Kruse brings all of this to the forefront -- it's really quite a mystical experience to read these stories. They are otherworldly at the same time as being so recognizable in our world. But that's where we are at right now, and these stories help us see it all the more.

[Michael Chin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book delivered such a thoughtfully eclectic, one-of-a kind collection. I have a feeling it’s going to give me food for thought for years to come.

[Wisconsin Alumni]

Kathryn Kruse ’00
Author

From the author:
Call it Midwestern Gothic. Call it a book of stories that get a hold of your head and heart. Whatever you call it, To Receive My Services You Must Be Dying and Alone takes us to the edge of lived experience and guides us to look back in wonder at essential elements of humanness: hope, grief, confusion, joy. While the worlds and characters in each of these stories arrive fresh and distinct — a woman drives through central Illinois returning lost baggage, accompanied by her mother’s toothless mini-poodle; a couple finds their lives weighed with 3D printings of their fetus after a miscarriage; a rag-tag group spends every day together, up-skilling for promised minimum wage jobs in an abandoned and repurposed pharmacy — we grab hold of a through line: the book spills over with people building and breaking idols to find love and survival where they can. And we cheer them on at each step.

[Ashley Siebels · Rating 5 out of 5]

This sharp, sexy, and darkly hilarious collection of short stories peeks into the absurdity of humanities joyful obsession with well everything--our jobs, our passions, the lives of strangers, death and grief. Kruse's prose is written with unflinching honesty that will make you laugh, cry, and relate. Each story introduces the audience to characters that are both wildly new and achingly familiar. A man can't let go of his wife or his Tupperware, a woman will kiss you but only if you're dying, another couple can't stop printing their baby. The writing is razor-sharp, full of wit and warmth, like eavesdropping on a conversation you shouldn’t be listening to but can’t tear yourself away from. By the end, you’ll have a new understanding of what it means to be human with only so much time on their hands before the inevitable occurs.

[Greg Zimmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this idiosyncratic, playful short story collection we find some real strivers: A woman trying to build a “mini-Vegas” resort in Mexico, a nurse at an amusement park which is the site of a huge catastrophe, and the title character, a woman who pays her bills by being with people at the hospital who are, yes, dying and alone.

One of my favorite stories in the collection, “The Printed Baby,” is about a couple who mourns the death of their miscarried child by 3D printing the fetus in various sizes. They wonder why the size of a fetus is always compared to a fruit. This story is definitely giving Jenny Offill, and I loved it for that reason.

Some of the shorter, more experimental pieces are tougher to sink into / understand. But overall, these stories are truly inventive and Kruse’s prose keeps you on your toes. An enjoyable reading experience!

[Juan Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in Kathryn Kruse’s collection startle with their attention to our most elemental selves: our bodies, our work, our health, our language. We share these traits with the characters, and what’s startling is not so much the familiar moments as the ways in which moments both familiar and unfamiliar intersect and entangle themselves into unusual arrangements. We’re never fully alone, this extraordinary collection suggests. Someone’s always trying to reach us. These stories are a wonderful reminders of that truth—shockingly accurate, bracingly funny, wonderful company all around.

[James Joseph Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is phenomenal. Sardonic, beautiful, haunting. Kruse has that rarest of qualities in a writer; the ability to completely transform the world she describes through her elegant prose, elevating the everyday to something sublime and transcendent. The stories all gleam with dark wit and emotional resonance. They’re filled with whimsy, melancholy, and the terrified excitement of riding a roller coaster as it careens off the tracks. An unforgettable debut.