Insightful, challenging and went on the journalistic journey with the author. Really beautifully written, you can feel her process with the subject matter and considering that the author experienced far more than perhaps they had bargained for, the level of empathy, sympathy and compassion is hugely admirable for something most of us would rather look away from.

Author Haley Campbell shadows various workers in death as they perform their work, describing the finer details of the processes and her own emotional reactions to them. Campbell argues that our society is too far removed from death, and that the taboo against visual or tactile contact with our dead does us harm. I read this book shortly after Anil Press’ Dirty Work, where he writes about jobs that we pretend don’t exist in order to avoid our own moral culpability. Here, Campbell reveals a world from which we remove ourselves in order insulate us from the reality of our own fragility.. By turns nauseating, poetic, heartbreaking, and strangely uplifting, All the Living and the Dead is written with bravery and vulnerability. Highly recommended.

I received this Advance Reader Copy in exchange for an honest review.

This one is going to stick with me for a long time. Definitely not for the squeamish. I cried throughout an entire chapter, but hearing that chapter out helped me process a lot of buried feelings. Very well done.

4 stars

I loved this. It reminded me of Caitlin Doughty books, which I have adored and are some of my favourites. So to find this in the same vein was amazing as I would love to read more books like this. It was utterly fascinating and I love learning more about this profession. The difference aspects of it all is fascinating. I loved that she got to talk to a varied of people who all thought differently. Excellent book and I really enjoyed this.

A good sociological insight of death and how we shy away from something so deeply intricacal to every one of us. This was genuinely a very lovely book
4.5