All The Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell

 

Hello my lovely readers!

Greetings from Ireland! My husband and I are having a fantastic time here and it feels good to be back in this country after 13 YEARS of having last been here. Here's just a few photos of the beautiful Ireland from when I was here in 2010 and now...

Can you tell in which photos I was a 21-year-old college student? 

Anyway, I brought this book All The Living and the Dead by Hayley Campbell after hearing about it on NPR. I am very interested in all things death, death related, mourning....everything. So when I heard the interview with the author, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.

Sadly, I was very disappointed in this book. Let's get into it.

SUMMARY

We're taught to fear death, even though it surrounds us by way of true-crime podcasts and TV shows,  the news and even nursery rhymes.

Journalist Hayley Campbell decided to do something to take the edge out of death. She talked to embalmers, fatality investigators, gravediggers and a former executioner. Fascinated by death since she was a child, Campbell interviews these people who experience and see death everyday. She questions if constantly seeing death changes you as person and what makes someone choose this kind of life?

Part memoir, party history, All the Living and the Dead gives readers a look into the psychology of Western death.

MY THOUGHTS

I did not like this book....and it hurts for me to say that! I was really looking forward to it, but the author's CONSTANT self-insertion and honestly lack of focus on the subject led me to not only DNF, but to leave it in the hotel room in Ireland for someone else to read.

I felt as though I learned nothing from the book. It kind of felt like Campbell kept that childhood fascination with death to the point where it made all her findings and storytelling immature. It honestly was an uncomfortable read because it also felt exploitative. It didn't feel like she was respectfully interviewing these people or reporting on death.

Going into this book, I was expecting human-interest stories about each profession and what they've experienced. Instead, all I got was Campbell's opinions and thoughts on everything. Shame.