“I think there is urgent, life-changing knowledge to be gained from becoming familiar with death, and from not letting your limits be guided by a fear of unknown things: the knowledge that you can stand to be near it, so that when the time comes you will not let someone you love die alone.”

I can’t recall exactly how this book popped up on my radar, but it had been in my TBR pile for a while and it wasn’t until I heard the author on NPR that I decided to give it a read. It also seemed appropriate for the Halloween season to read about dead people.

“All the Living and the Dead” is not necessarily about dead people. It mainly deals with the people who are in charge of handling the dead in the many different scenarios where death occurs. Hayley Campbell does quite a good job of keeping this book and its subject matter from becoming morbid or dark and, while some of the locations and interviews do describe the messier aspects of death, the book is not steeped in gore.

I guess I could file this one under “odd nonfiction”, however, the book is well written. Despite the subject matter, Campbell and the people she interviews are thoughtful, sincere and respectful. I also found it interesting how each of these people ended up in their respective professions and how they face the work they do every day.

While I realize that this book or its topic may not be for everyone, death is a part of living, albeit the last part. In my honest opinion, it's a topic that people should be able to talk about without feeling all squishy about it and Campbell's book does that.