The Undertaking

Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

By: Thomas Lynch

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Paperback | 1 June 2009

At a Glance

Paperback
224 Pages

Age
18+

Dimensions(cm)
19.68 x 12.7 x 1.91

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"Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople." So opens this singular and wise testimony. Like all poets, inspired by death, Thomas Lynch is, unlike others, also hired to bury the dead or to cremate them and to tend to their families in a small Michigan town where he serves as the funeral director.

In the conduct of these duties he has kept his eyes open, his ear tuned to the indispensable vernaculars of love and grief. In these twelve pieces his is the voice of both witness and functionary. Here, Lynch, poet to the dying, names the hurts and whispers the condolences and shapes the questions posed by this familiar mystery. So here is homage to parents who have died and to children who shouldn't have. Here are golfers tripping over grave markers, gourmands and hypochondriacs, lovers and suicides. These are the lessons for life our mortality teaches us.

Industry Reviews

"A startling and eloquent meditation on death and bereavement." -- Spin "A memoir that is stand-out superb." -- Esquire "Forceful, authentic and full of a kind of ethical and aesthetic clarity." -- New York Times "One of the most life-affirming books I have read ... brims with humanity, irreverence, and invigorating candor." -- The Nation "Lynch's vivid prose has the electricity of writing that tells us what is going on in the secret places of the community-and the secret places of the heart." -- USA Today

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