A diverse--and somewhat uneven--collection of essays--personal, academic, playful, and occasionally impenetrably lyrical reflections on death. I found most meaning in those that recounted or reflected on personal experiences. The piece by Kevin Baker in which he details the discovery of his genetic legacy is, in my opinion, the best by far in the anthology. (

)

fountainoverflows | Dec 29, 2012 |

Editors Shields (The Thing About Life Is One Day You'll Be Dead) and Morrow (The Diviner's Tale) asked 20 writers to write about death and "speak about the unspeakable." The essays range widely from blow-flies to widowhood to 'ghost bikes' to cemeteries and even pornography. The tones and responses are as varied as the authors themselves -- funny, grotesque, honest, mournful, reflective.

The list of authors is impressive: Diane Ackerman, Mark Doty, Jonathan Safran, Geoff Dyer, Annie Dillard, Joyce Carol Oates, Christopher Sorrentina to name a few. . . each ponder the inevitability of death, the cost of it, how it hangs over our heads, stalks us, creates us. It is a moving collection, sometimes comforting, sometimes disturbing, and entirely worthwhile. (

)

Laurenbdavis | Sep 28, 2012 |

date ▼ | votes

Showing 2 of 2

▾Published reviews

no reviews | add a review

▾Other authors

» Add other authors

▾Work-to-work relationships

view history

▾Common Knowledge

You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.

For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.

Series (with order)

Canonical title

Original title

Alternative titles

Original publication date

People/Characters

Important places

Important events

Related movies

Awards and honors

Epigraph

Dedication

First words

Quotations

Last words

Disambiguation notice

Publisher's editors

Blurbers

Publisher series

▾References

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

▾LibraryThing members' description

Book description

Haiku summary

▾Book descriptions

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 039333936X, Paperback)

What is death and how does it touch upon life? Twenty writers look for answers.

Birth is not inevitable. Life certainly isn't. The sole inevitability of existence, the only sure consequence of being alive, is death. In these eloquent and surprising essays, twenty writers face this fact, among them Geoff Dyer, who describes the ghost bikes memorializing those who die in biking accidents; Jonathan Safran Foer, proposing a new way of punctuating dialogue in the face of a family history of heart attacks and decimation by the Holocaust; Mark Doty, whose reflections on the art-porn movie Bijou lead to a meditation on the intersection of sex and death epitomized by the AIDS epidemic; and Joyce Carol Oates, who writes about the loss of her husband and faces her own mortality. Other contributors include Annie Dillard, Diane Ackerman, Peter Straub, and Brenda Hillman.

(retrieved from Amazon Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:23:48 -0400)

▾Library descriptions

Twenty contemporary writers, including Geoff Dyer, Jonathan Safran Foer, Mark Doty, Joyce Carol Oates and Peter Straub confront the only sure consequence of being alive, through essays on ghost bikes, family histories of heart attacks and the AIDS epidemic.… (more)