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Summary: Reverent, Illustrative Insights on Death and Ritual
Review: Thomas Lynch guides us into a milieu through which we all will travel (at least once), but which few of us understand. "The Undertaking" is not a textbook of how the funeral business operates, but a series of reverent stories about people who have died, those who grieve them, and how the undertaker cares for both. Lynch instructively reflects on the rituals associated with death (and death itself), and reinforces the importance of treating these moments of our ultimate disposition with respect and gravity. This perhaps is the most important aspect of the book. As well, Lynch sometimes humorously, sometimes poignantly, reveals to us the complexity of working in the dismal trade--running a business that sells a product no one wants to buy, while doing it with patience and compassion. My only criticism is that, throughout the book, Lynch constantly instructs us that the dead don't care what happens to them. Indeed, wakes and funerals are balm for the living, but who knows what the departed know? Wouldn't we all like to believe that, after the unfortunate end, we could attend our own funeral?
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Summary: An ispired and thoughtful account of 'the dismal trade'
Review: Thomas Lynch has produced an eloquent and thoughtful book of reflections on what he terms 'the dismal trade' of undertaking. This text is well-written ,insightfull and graced with touches of wry (though sometimes mordant) humour. While this might not be a 'beach book' it is easy to read; no doubt attributble to Lynch's skill with language garnered from his experience as a poet. I would highly recommend this slim tome.
--Dr. M. A. Bailey
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Summary: the darkest comedy in town
Review: Thomas Lynch is amazingly perfect with words, Ifound MR. Lynch to be the chris rock of the undertaking community. 5 stars
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Summary: The Dead Don't Care
Review: Thomas Lynch repeats that the dead don't care. But, the living do. This remarkable little volume is not dismal but celebratory. As funerals celebrate the lives of those we love, Thomas Lynce celebrates life in general. As an undertaker, Lynch bears witness to the "what" of death, and as a poet, he expresses the "why". In his business he understands it's aftermath, and in his prose, it's meaning. Not at all about life's end, but instead resounding with respect for life, love, faith, and the natural order of things.
Rating:
Summary: The Dead Don't Care
Review: Thomas Lynch repeats that the dead don't care. But, the living do. This remarkable little volume is not dismal but celebratory. As funerals celebrate the lives of those we love, Thomas Lynce celebrates life in general. As an undertaker, Lynch bears witness to the "what" of death, and as a poet, he expresses the "why". In his business he understands it's aftermath, and in his prose, it's meaning. Not at all about life's end, but instead resounding with respect for life, love, faith, and the natural order of things.
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Summary: This book is anything but "dismal"
Review: Thomas Lynch speaks eloquently of the rituals surrounding death and teaches us lessons in the care of the living. Both humorous and straight-forward. Time with this book is time well spent
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Summary: The Dead Don't Care
Review: Thomas Lynch's book, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, is an emotional bungee jump, hurling your mood to an all time low, only to bring you back to out loud laughter. Lynch covers many topics from the political history of his town, Milford, to the actual embalming of his own father to prepare him for his "afterlife." Mr. Lynch pounds home the verifiable truth that "the dead don't care". No matter how careful or careless we tend to be in the planning of memorial services, funerals, etc. Lynch contests that we are just doing it for ourselves and truly "the dead don't care." Thomas Lynch has many hands on experiences that he logs through out his emotional roller coaster of a book. This is a MUST READ for anyone who has lost or will lose someone close to you. THAT MEANS YOU!!!
Rating:
Summary: The Dead Don't Care
Review: Thomas Lynch's book, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade, is an emotional bungee jump, hurling your mood to an all time low, only to bring you back to out loud laughter. Lynch covers many topics from the political history of his town, Milford, to the actual embalming of his own father to prepare him for his "afterlife." Mr. Lynch pounds home the verifiable truth that "the dead don't care". No matter how careful or careless we tend to be in the planning of memorial services, funerals, etc. Lynch contests that we are just doing it for ourselves and truly "the dead don't care." Thomas Lynch has many hands on experiences that he logs through out his emotional roller coaster of a book. This is a MUST READ for anyone who has lost or will lose someone close to you. THAT MEANS YOU!!!
Rating:
Summary: A Poet/Undertaker writes brilliantly/wittily on the end game
Review: Waterstones at Notting Hill, London, provided me with this perfect vacation reading. About the final act of the living for the newly departed, it seems the ideal vacation book, for is not death, after all, the endless vacation?Thomas Lynch, middle-Westerner, Poet honored in England and sadly invisible in the States, writes movingly, wittily, fantastically, of the final rites of the living.These essays are by turn reflections on the deeply personal, as in burying one's father; send-ups of the American penchant for the bottom line (the essay on combining the green and grief of the cemetary with the practicality of the golfing mania); the daily fact of death and the professional's chosen role to deal with it honorably, gracefully, and thoughtfully. This is perhaps not a book about death so much as about life and the living; a book about others' final moments and our survival of them until the final moment is ours. By which such time, if we listen to the practiced language and balanced attitude of this Poet/Undertaker, we will perhaps be prepared for our own final and inevitable undertaking
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Summary: This Book is a Gift
Review: When I finished reading this book, I immediately started over again from the beginning. It is beautifully and sensitively written, providing an insight into the "dismal trade" as no one ever has before. For example, Mr. Lynch writes eloquently of an embalmer's gift to a murdered child's mother, describing how the embalmer had "retrieved her death from the one who had killed her." It is one of those books that stays with you...that somehow makes an imprint on your very soul.
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