David Shield, author of 10 previous books, and Bradford Morrow, a novelist, have teamed up as editors of this top-drawer collection of essays on death by 20 versatile and talented writers. Americans are notorious for trying to avoid or run from any confrontation with mortality or impermanence. Better we should heed the wise words of Etty Hillesum who said: "It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life, we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death in our life, we enlarge and enrich it."
These sensitive and imaginative writers circle around the inevitability of death with immense energy. Joyce Carol Oates plunges into the nature of her grief after the death of her husband. Peter Straub ponders a near-fatal accident that has had a rippling effect on his whole life. David Gates brings us up-close and personal describing the deaths of both his parents. Melissa Pritchard writes poignantly about graveyards as she tries to come to terms with the death and cremation of her mother. Sallie Tisdale offers something completely different with her idiosyncratic reflections on the roles of maggots and blowflies in dead and decomposing bodies. And last but not least is Annie Dillard's philosophical essay on death taking us by storm.
