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Ross brings both MacThomais and Glasnevin to life, delving into his family history and that of the cemetery, artfully interweaving both with tales of Ireland’s wider history. I would indeed gravely read the ivy-overgrown stones and imagine the lives of those who resided beneath them, creating life stories built around archaic names and centuries-old dates.
If they did, they probably wouldn’t find themselves talking to a woman whose husband had committed suicide while being mentally ill. Just a few days ago my partner and fellow Shiny reviewer Basil Ransome Davies found a new walk to do in these times of Covid-inspired local diversions.Prior to reading this book, I had not pondered that once the idea of resurrection started to be doubted, cremation took off, which caused certain cemeteries to decay.
It's very different from Sprackland's spare elegance, less restrained and more sprawling, less elegiac and more full of gusto, sometimes jokey and interested, as a good journalist would be in the varieties of human life and death to be encountered around graveyards. All those lives lived, all those stories now forgotten, some people still remembered, most now just names on a gravestone.
The first barmaid in England to have been eaten by a tiger (Hannah Twynoy, 23 October 1703, Malmesbury) makes it into his pages. The book is also a meditation on a personal approach to mortality, burial customs, and what follows after. A secular place, with slate stones for markers, it is a place of calm and beauty where the bodies of those gone are put into the earth to become part of it.
Peter Ross, the book's author, encourages us to go beyond the stones and physical attributes of cemeteries because they are like libraries and have stories, which are connected to each person buried there. The books featured on this site are aimed primarily at readers aged 13 or above and therefore you must be 13 years or over to sign up to our newsletter.Ross takes us down a balanced path of love and remembrance, seeing life and death from all angles and leading us on a non-biased, compassionate journey. He respectfully observes the rites of different faiths and cultures, looks at Christian, Muslim and Natural burials and talks to the people who organise and carry them out. Ross introduces us to characters like Lilias Adie, occupant of the only known witch grave in Scotland, who perished in 1704 after confessing - possibly after being tortured - to sorcery. Whether with a ton of earth above us or an hour and a half at 900C in the incinerator, all our stories come to an end sometime. Early on, he mentions that cemeteries are like parks for introverts, which I love, alongside how cemeteries can become like your favorite beach.
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