She clearly cares for her 'clients' and represents an ideal of how such cases should be conducted. You can't fault her personal passion and commitment. Moving out of London to the seaside, Evie found herself needing a job, and ended up working for a local council. What happens if you die without family or money? The answer to this very three-in-the-morning question is that Evie, or someone like her, will step in and arrange your funeral. i bought this book on a complete whim, i’d seen an advert for it and thought it sounded interesting. i’m glad i did because it was such an insightful and emotional read. Money Matters Neurodiversity Preparing for University - Subject Reading Lists Reading For Pleasure Stationery

Ultimately, Evie discovers that her job is more about life than it is about death, funerals being for the living and death being merely a trigger to rediscover a life and celebrate it against the odds. About This Edition ISBN: If you're coming to Coles by car, why not take advantage of the 2 hours free parking at Sainsbury's Pioneer Square - just follow the signs for Pioneer Square as you drive into Bicester and park in the multi-storey car park above the supermarket. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you. You don't need to shop in Sainsbury's to get the free parking! Where to Find Us Evie King also struggles with her role and emotions in all of this. What is she supposed to feel, or not, in relation to the people she is organising funerals for? With every death some sort of relationship is formed, and some cases, like the burial of someone with learning difficulties, hit closer to home than others.In Ashes to Admin, Evie King shares endlessly fascinating — and often unexpected — experiences from her job as a council funeral officer. Buy from our bookstore and 25% of the cover price will be given to a school of your choice to buy more books. *15% of eBooks. Home > There's plenty to learn in this gently uplifting book. Some of Evie King's cases will make you cry, others will make you angry, and some will make you smile - or even *laugh*. Above all, there's nothing morbid or depressing about this book - unless you count the behaviour and attitudes of some of the deceaseds' family members. The chapters that follow, poignantly named after some of the individuals whose funerals Evie organised, and whose lives she here respects and honours, are filled with stirring details. Honest on how it feels, as an administrative official, to witness so many tragic lives, troubled lives, and lives that might have been different, and how it feels to be confronted by death so brutally on a daily basis, this is a uniquely absorbing read. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sad about it. I once Tweeted: ‘woke up at 11am, Curly Wurly for breakfast, now off to watch Buffy in the bath. Ask me again if I regret not having kids’. I still stand by that and will happily die alone on that hill.”

A remarkable book about a job that most of us don’t realise exists by a woman who chose to throw her heart and soul into it. Philosophical, funny, tragic and intriguing. This has to be made into a prime-time TV drama' – Richard Herring

LoveReading Says

Easy read. Felt a little voyeuristic at times and I felt her jokey style a bit off putting. I question how typical her experiences are and whether the fact that Section 46 funerals are just good in her council because she's so invested in it and has a supportive council. I know of others which are not like she describes at all. In this talk, Evie lifts the coffin lid on the world of a council funeral officer, a job that lurches from the legislative and administrative, via the workaday and practical, right through to the emotional and existential. Her stories are sometimes tragic, as with the case of an unidentified woman found on a beach buried without even a name, but often uplifting and occasionally hilarious. Knowing absolutely zero about council funerals aside from the negative term 'a paupers funeral' the subject matter of this book caught my eye. Its not often people talk about a good death, planning your funeral or what happens when you cant afford to pay for a loved ones funeral. Evie King goes to great lengths to dispel any negative view points over what a section 46 funeral looks like and she goes even further to give the people handed into her care the kind of funeral we might all wish for. Diane (Philomena Cunk) Morgan: "A fascinating, poignant, and funny insight into the slightly macabre world of a Council Funeral Officer." We were up on the cliff edge on a stormy night, even though the weather would have been fine at the time of year she died, nice bit of pathetic fallacy from my subconscious there.”

the author is a fantastic narrator and the perfect person to guide us through this book, the emotional parts and the funny anecdotes too. As she learns on the job, her story is told through a series of case studies, from bodies discovered at home, to deaths in care homes, and on through to the outbreak of Covid, this is an insight into the way death is dealt with on a political and personal level. Where care homes have agreements with funeral homes, where families are embarrassed because they can't pay for a loved one's funeral, and the care a council can give. The idea of a paupers' funeral, even now, gives pause. Sometimes tragic, as with the case of an unidentified woman found on a beach buried without even a name, but often uplifting and occasionally hilarious. Ultimately, Evie discovers that her job is more about life than it is about death, funerals being for the living and death being merely a trigger to rediscover a life and celebrate it against the odds. In technical parlance, Evie is responsible for “Section 46 funerals under the Public Health Act”. In lay terms, that means arranging funerals for people who die alone, without family or friends to arrange a funeral. In her straight-talking, informative introduction, Evie explains the process: “when a person dies in these circumstances, I get a call, typically from a care home, or a coroner, less typically from a relative”.In Ashes to Admin, Evie shows, however, that very few people aren’t loved, but that mourners can take various shapes. The effect of people’s deaths can ripple far beyond the stereotypical expectation of family: It is incredibly uplifting to read the stories of people who, on the outset, look like they have nobody left in the world to care about them, transform into people with well-attended funerals which many might envy. That transformation is often the result of the work of a council worker like Evie in really caring about those who land in her work in-tray; researching, making phone calls, trawling social media and the deceased's home for clues as to who they are and the people who filled their universe in life. As we drove away I thought about all of the atypical types of grief and mourner I had come across so far, so different from the pre-conceived familial norms. Care home staff, neighbours, garden club members, local bus drivers. There were a thousand ways to be mourned, the benchmark didn’t have to be weeping spouses or devastated children” LoveReading exists because books change lives, and buying books through LoveReading means you get to change the lives of future generations, with 25% of the cover price donated to schools in need. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives. I found the author's attitude to dying to be positively infectious, so the book has probably had a lasting impact on the ways in which I think about death and dying, as well as making the most out of living.