When Death is on the loose, when the Beloveds are leaving, when Time shows no signs of stopping for anyone, and when the sun and the moon don't make the sense they used to make, you're going to wish you had Matthew Brennan's book One Life somewhere within your reach. It's a book of a spare and dark American love and loss, where leaves glint "coldly/like fluorescent bulbs about to burn out," but the shadow here is always considered, touched with beauty, and well-earned. People will lie to you about the darkness. Matthew Brennan won't.