A digression. No one think it more praiseworthy to undergo anything else without help with pain, is this the biblical 'In pain you will bring forth children and to your husband you will turn and he will have authority over you,' since we have abandoned the latter half, or most of us have, why has the first part remained? Pity the Amish (who still abide by the second half as well) and Scientologists neither of whom are allowed any pain relief or to make the slightest noise during labour and birth. I wonder if they actually manage that? Life is meaningful because it ends; we are brief blips on a long timeline colliding with other people, other unlikely collections of atoms and energy that somehow existed at the same time we did.” The series is set in an isolated Somerset valley in 1894, a place where the implications of the industrial revolution are still being keenly felt, a place where centuries of living a certain wayof life are coming abruptly to an end. Into this place comes Nathan Appleby and his young wife, Charlotte. Nathan charming, intelligent, is a brilliant London psychologist, a pioneer in that new science. Many of his troubled patients come to him as a result of that Victorian obsession with death and the afterlife, damaged by mesmerism, mediums, Ouija boards, automatic writing. Nathan is a man of science, and believes that everything has a rational explanation. Charlotte Appleby is his vivacious, independent wife, herself something of a pioneer as a leading society photographer in London. When they inherit the run-down farm of Shepzoy House, none of their friends expect them to actually go and live there and learn to be farmers, but the Applebys have lived there for generations and his sense of duty and belonging is powerful. I try to figure out the path between hectic art auction house and running a funeral home and I cannot begin to make a guess. ‘I meet people who have a much clearer reason for doing this kind of thing,’ she says, laughing. ‘For me, it wasn’t like that at all.’ The way she tells it, the route may have been winding, but her motivation is lucid, even if she couldn’t see it at the time.

This book about death and about the people whose jobs and whose lives are dealing with death is moving, funny, and liable to unexpectedly cause me to tear up, reading it. It's about the head and the heart of death, about who we are, and is filled with images and moments that will remain in my head until the end. It manages the astonishing balancing act of conveying Hayley Campbell's own fascination with Death, the dead, and the people who deal with death in one or other of its manifestations, while also allowing us to feel what she feels for the living and the dead. A gentle book and, like death itself, sometimes an unexpectedly kind one.” — Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods Thanks to Macmillan Audio, Hayley Campbell and NetGalley for the advance audiobook. I am voluntarily leaving my honest review*A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people―morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners―who work in it and what led them there. An insider’s account of the rampant misconduct within the Trump administration, including the tumult surrounding the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. Interesting was the special maternity unit for women who were going to deliver a dead baby or one who would die soon after birth. A quiet, calm place, where there were no screams of pain from women in unmedicated labour. There are cooling cots so that the baby can remain with the parents until they are ready to let the baby be buried. And midwives who dedicate themselves to delivering only dead babies in sadness, although they train to deliver in joy, one of the few medical procedures that is generally joyous. Special women, very compassionate and empathetic.

Many of us were confined to the personal space of our homes, we lived, ate and even worked in our homes shielded from the unpleasantness of illness and death. Some people went through the agony of not being able to be near loved ones in hospitals or adult living facilities due to fear of infection and when someone we knew died, we were likely to only experience the funeral on Zoom from a distance. An intriguing, candid, and frequently poignant book that asks what the business of death can teach all of us in the midst of life. Readers will form a connection with Campbell's voice as intimate as her own relationship with mortality." — Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering ArtHayley Campbell is a journalist who, like myself, is interested in the subject of death. The very notion of wanting to find out what happens to the human body when we are no longer here. I went from a fear of death as a child straight into an interest, a morbid curiosity some might say. But I think it’s important for us to remember that it is a nature, inevitable process. I have read many books revolving around fictional death, but never one about the people that work closely with death. Some professionals that Hayley interviews are morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, and executioners.