Author:Thomas Lynch
Like all poets, inspired by death, Lynch is, unlike others, also hired to bury the dead or 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 ears tuned to the indispensable vernaculars of love and grief. In these twelve essays is the voice of both witness and functionary. Lynch stands between 'the living and the living who have dies' with the same outrage and amazement, straining for the same glimpse we all get of what mortality means to a vital species. 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 essays of rare elegance and grace, full of fierce compassion and rich in humour and humanity - lessons taught to the living by the dead.
These craggy "life studies," forged during his years in the "dismal trade," are always forceful, authentic and full of a kind of ethical and esthetic clarity.
—— Richard Bernstein , New York TimesPalahniuk starts with a throwaway thought - "what if words could hurt?" - and stretches it until it snaps
—— ArenaA black comic cauldron bubbling with contagious ideas
—— Time OutMr. Palahniuk further refines his ability to create parables that are as substantial as they are off-the-wall
—— New York TimesThis is vintage Palahniuk: weird, creepy, twisted, upsetting, and ultimately a great read
—— Library JournalNot least among Mervyn Peake's virtues was his ability to be serious while involved in grotesque humour, and to be idiosyncratic while being completely professional. And that drawing was the essential of all he did
—— Quentin BlakeA wonderful story, a saga of somewhere strange that beats Tolkien into a cocked hat. Superb language and extraordinary imagination
—— Ranulph Fiennes'The Drowning Girl' was inspired by Peake... Fushia was my dream. The idea of the infinite, of the unreal, of the innocence dying
—— Robert Smith, The CureGripping debut
—— GlamourI just finished the most fantastic gripping book, the Mistress’s Revenge by Tamar Cohen. I had to keep going to bed early to read it, it’s amazing!
—— Lisa JewellJoseph Conrad said that fiction is primarily a visual art; he would have loved Zachary Lazar's Sway for the thousand indelible visual details of a startling originality - and for Lazar's ability to shine a light into the contemporary heart of darkness
—— Edmund WhiteA hilarious and compelling read
—— Good Housekeeping
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