Daisy Cooper’s Rules for Living

Tamsin Keily

‘Everybody gets their turn at life and 

everybody gets their turn at death.’

AGED just 23 and on the threshold of an exciting new chapter with her boyfriend, Daisy Cooper wasn’t supposed to slip on some ice and die… even Death himself says her sudden demise one frosty night was all down to an embarrassing clerical error.

But rules are rules, when you’re dead, you really are dead and there’s no way you can ever go back to the world you knew… or is there?

Death, the ‘undiscovered country’ which has puzzled the will of writers from Shakespeare and Milton to Alice Sebold and Jodi Picoult, comes under the eagle eye of Tamsin Keily in a highly original debut novel which tackles the emotive subject of death with a bewitching blend of piercing insight and compassionate humour.

Darkly funny, and yet powerful enough to move readers to tears, Daisy Cooper’s Rules for Living explores all those very human questions about life, death, grief and acceptance, but along the way, asks us to consider whether struggling to move on might not just be a problem for the living.

IMPRESSIVE DEBUT: Tamsin Keily

Marketing assistant Daisy Cooper has just spent a romantic evening with her boyfriend Eric and together, they made a decision that she will move in with him. Other than that, it has been an ordinary winter’s day in London.

On arrival home, her best friend, flat mate and ‘unofficial sister’ Violet informs her they have run out of milk and Daisy heads off to buy a pint. But she never reaches the shop… Daisy slips on a patch of ice, cracks her head ‘in one swift, heartless motion,’ and suddenly her life on earth is over.

But instead of turning up at the Pearly Gates, Daisy finds herself in a dull, grey office which seems ordinary but she knows instantly is not, and is manned by a tall, lean man with eyes ‘the colour of morning grass’ whose name is Death but is far from traditional notions of the Grim Reaper.

And it turns out that her death is actually a mistake… Daisy wasn’t meant to die for another sixty-nine years and it’s all the fault of Death himself who made one terrible, embarrassing clerical error. So she’s stuck in Administration; she can’t go forward and she can’t go back.

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To make up for the mistake and to fill the 69-year gap, Daisy becomes Death’s personal assistant which means guiding the dead to the afterlife, and having the opportunity to take a look at the effects of her death on those she leaves behind.

As Daisy battles against this strange new world, she starts to learn that letting go isn’t just a challenge faced by those left behind. Soon, friendship, hope and even love begin to come alive in
the most unexpected ways. For Daisy Cooper, death is the perfect time to start making sense of life...

With its refreshingly left-field, decidedly contemporary take on the whole concept of death – and an exploration of death’s painfully familiar aftershocks like loss, grief, loneliness and bewilderment – Keily’s novel encourages readers to ponder their own mortality.

Stuck in limbo with the sardonic character Death, Daisy provides a human touch to the daily job of processing souls and we witness their witty banter and the slow erosion of Death’s cynical other-world view that ‘feelings are overrated.’

Written with sensitivity and insight, but with a sense of fun that defies its emotive subject matter, Daisy Cooper’s Rules for Living is a clever, compelling mixed bag of genres… part rom-com, part meditation on life, death, friendship and love, and part mystery over whether Daisy really is dead. An impressive debut from an exciting new author… and the perfect discussion read for book clubs.

(Orion, hardback, £16.99)