Review by Booklist Review
Dynamically creative writers and editors Shields and Morrow invited 20 exceptional kindred spirits to consider the questions of what death is and how it affects life, and the result is a remarkably accomplished and buoyantly provocative anthology. Horror writer Peter Straub's account of a near-fatal boyhood accident and shocking out-of-body experience is gloriously chilling. Christopher Sorrentino brilliantly links thoughts about his late father, the elegantly innovative writer Gilbert Sorrentino, with prickly musings on digital mementos intentional and otherwise, including the revealing listing of one individual's web searches preserved on a creepy site called AOL Stalker. Kyoki Mori writes of her mother's suicide, and Margo Jefferson ponders suicides among privileged yet nonetheless marginalized young African Americans. Mark Doty untangles the knot of sex and death during the worst of the AIDS tragedies. Robin Hemley visits graveyards. The death of Brenda Hillman's first husband summons thoughts of Cezanne. Diane Ackerman and Sallie Tisdale closely observe the cycles of nature, and Annie Dillard offers a breathtaking view of humankind's perpetual busyness and ardor in spite of, or perhaps because of, death.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
When editors Shields (The Thing About Life Is One Day You'll Be Dead) and Morrow (The Diviner's Tale) approached 20 writers with the idea for this anthology, their requirements were simple: address the subject of death and "speak about the unspeakable." What resulted is a collection of extraordinary essays ranging from the life cycles of flies to reflections on a '70s-era porn film, the "romance of old cemeteries," and "ghost bikes" as memorials to traffic victims. In one essay, Diane Ackerman (Dawn Light) describes "the sudden monstrous subtraction" she felt on learning of a close friend's death. Sallie Tisdale (Women of the Way: Discovering 2,500 Years of Buddhist Wisdom) points out, "It is our peculiar punishment that we know things change and we want this to be otherwise." Often poetic and at times funny or gruesome while exposing raw grief, the writers-Mark Doty, Jonathan Safran, Geoff Dyer, Annie Dillard, to name a few-tackle the subject of death with honesty and courage. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Editors Shields (The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead) and Morrow (editor, Conjunctions; The Diviner's Tale) recruited 20 writers-from the well known, e.g., Peter Straub, Joyce Carol Oates, Annie Dillard, and Diane Ackerman, to the less familiar-to contribute these diverse essays on death. The essays consider death in its various forms and explore the diverse human emotions elicited when confronted with its reality. Ultimately, through these poignant, heartfelt essays, readers will gain a refreshed understanding of helping loved ones as they pass on as well as of what it means to be alive. These seriously considered, highly literate analyses don't necessarily guarantee some sort of passageway to eternal peace or its opposite. In other words, they raise the bar for more philosophical readers searching for alternatives to age-old traditions perpetuated in religious dogma. Curiously, the editors do not explain the criteria they used in selecting the writers. VERDICT This impressive anthology of theme-based literary nonfiction is recommended to lay readers interested in various philosophical perspectives on death, and it will help professionals who work with dying patients and their families.-Dale Farris, Groves, TX (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Twenty writers discuss what the inevitability of death means to them.Editors Shields (Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, 2010, etc.) and Morrow (Ariel's Crossing, 2002, etc.) elicit a wide-ranging variety of responses to their request to "speak the unspeakable, envision the unseeable." In the intensely personal "The Siege," Joyce Carol Oates vividly describes her grief after her husband's death, while Annie Dillard's "This is the Life" is more philosophical. She writes that whatever our culture tells us about how to live our lives, the fundamentals remain the same: "You have seen an ordinary bit of what is real, the infinite fabric of time that eternity shoots through, and time's soft-skinned people working and dying under slowly shifting stars. Then what?" In "Bayham Street," Robert Clark interweaves his unsuccessful efforts to learn more about the life of a sister he barely knew with his exploration of past historical and cultural events during a trip to Europe. "A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease" is Jonathan Safran Foer's humorous account of how his family uses pregnant pauses to slide over serious issues, including his father's heart condition, uncomfortable questions about girlfriends, painful memories, etc. Though most of this collection's essays are impressive, Sallie Tisdale's piece,"The Sutra of Maggots and Blowflies,"is a standout. In it, the author finds beauty in the way that maggots and blowflies are part of the cycle of birth, death and the re-creation of life by feeding on decomposed matter: "a piece from here and a fleck from there, a taste of this karma, a speck of that memory, this carbon atom, that bit of water, a little protein, a pinch of pain: until a new body and a new life is made from pieces of the past. The wee bit they claim, can you begrudge it? Dissolved, our flesh is their water, and they lap us up."Other contributors include Mark Doty, Geoff Dyer, Peter Straub, Terry Castle and Diane Ackerman.A wonderfully speculative patchwork quilt on the meaning of life and death.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
