An unflinching examination of death and what it means for the humans who work directly with it, those who experience it, and the ones who avoid thinking about it—a book for everyone and, simultaneously, only those who choose to look beyond the modern socialization of death as only the macabre and frightening.

I'm scared to die.

I'm sure that's a feeling that many of us have either come to reckon with and live uncomfortably alongside or ignore entirely in the hope that, by some miracle of modern medicine, we'll avoid it entirely. It's paradoxical, then, that I jumped at an advance copy of the audiobook from Netgalley, read by the author herself, and then tandem read a physical copy from my library. Maybe it was out of some masochistic drive to force myself to confront my own fears about death. Maybe it was the fact that I'm writing a novel in which the main character is a mortician. Perhaps it was a bit of both and some other ubiquitous emotion I can't quite put a name to. Either way, I'm glad I picked this book and enthusiastically give it five stars—and would give it more if I could.

Both heartbreaking and reassuring, sometimes fatalistic but always poignant, this book gripped me from the very first page, and I deliberately read it slowly so I could fully appreciate the author's exploration of the death industry (because yes, death is an industry, but perhaps a more humanized industry for me now that I've read this). Campbell interviews a wide array of death professionals, from embalmers to crime scene cleanup to bereavement midwives to cryonics specializing in the preservation of bodies to be revived later (not to be confused with cryogenics, which the author differentiates in the text). It reckons with the one unifying principal of human life: we all will, at one point or another, die.

Death workers are fundamentally people who work behind the scenes, and it's often a thankless profession. I really did find it intriguing to examine what exactly these workers do and how they interact with the general public. There are a few chapters which were difficult to read as a squeamish reader (particularly the chapter involving the anatomical pathology technologist), and several made me put the book aside for a good cry. It's not that the book seemed exploitative. In fact, I'd say the exact opposite. Although Campbell frequently inserts her own opinions into the discussion—which I'd say is difficult to avoid in such an intensely personal, albeit universal, topic—it's most often done with compassion for the worker and the dead's experience.

It was reassuring to me that these people aren't monoliths, which is a misconception I've likely developed as a result of my avoidance of death. Personally, I haven't experienced much death in my family, so to read through the different professions, to put names and personalities and motivations to them, was a profound experience for me. The book wasn't meant to shock but inform, and I believe it did just that.

I'll be adding this one to my personal collection, mostly because I know I'll want to revisit this later.

Thank you to both Netgalley and the publishers for an advance copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.