Reviews and Comments

Panthergirl

Panthergirl@bookrastinating.com

Joined 1 year, 11 months ago

Never without a book, digital or otherwise. Open to most genres in fiction but gravitate to dysfunctional families. As such, I'm also big on memoirs and behind-the-scenes pop culture books about television and Hollywood. I love learning about how the sausage is made. Prefer true crime to fictionalized crime and prefer history to historical fiction (with the exception of Maggie O'Farrell because she is a treasure). Not a huge sci-fi or fantasy reader but that said, I've read the entire Philip K. Dick catalogue. What can I say? I'm complicated.

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Hayley Campbell: All the Living and the Dead (2022, St. Martin's Press) 5 stars

A Truly Remarkable Read

5 stars

This book is unforgettable. The first several chapters are fascinating and even funny, as the author experiences several death-related jobs first-hand from funeral director to executioner to crime scene cleanup guy. She’s remarkably unflinching in both her reaction to being up close and personal with this work, and in her description of it. But then things change when she experiences something in an autopsy room involving a baby. It’s not the autopsy itself, but something worse. To help process her reaction, she seeks out and spends time with a bereavement midwife. Both of these chapters are VERY difficult to read. Thankfully she ends the book on a more upbeat note and the last line of the afterword made me laugh out loud.