All That Remains: A Life in Death

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An engrossing memoir ... an affecting mix of the personal and professional. Erica Wagner, Financial Times One might expect [this book] to be a grim read but it absolutely isn’t. I found it invigorating!" (Andrew Marr BBC Radio 4 'Start the Week') For a professor of anatomy and forensic anatomy I had expected more. The best book I've ever read on anatomy and death (and philosophy, in the form of thoughful essays) is by F. González-Crussí. His The Day of the Dead: And Other Mortal Reflections is so stupendous, and so brilliantly written I was never able to come up with a review that would accurately reflect my impressions of it.

The part that I found most fascinating about this book was her discussion of mass fatalities due to war and natural disasters. She talks about her experiences in Kosovo identifying remains and of the 2004 tsunami. Sue’s experiences at these violence scenes were very emotional and heartbreaking, but she did her duty and was always respectful to the dead and their families. A model of how to write about the effect of human evil without losing either objectivity or sensitivity . . . Heartening and anything but morbid . . . Leaves you thinking about what kind of human qualities you value, what kinds of people you actually want to be with' (Rowan Williams, New Statesman) Briefly - fascinating, powerful and very well written. Without question this will be one of my best books of the year.I suppose I was less taken with the small sections near the beginning of the book that seemed to be more like a familial memoir or history rather than delivering facts and experiences. Although there was always a reason for them, such as a device to further expand the readers understanding of various biological processes etc., I just wasn’t that taken with them in comparison to the later chapters. There are a wide variety of cases offered to the reader in the course of this book. I'd rather people discovered the stories for themselves. However I would just say that the Kosovo chapter was far the hardest to read and made me shed a tear. It might well have been the one with most humour in too. Certainly the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the Kosovo chapters show just how determinedly outspoken the author can be although she appears to be listened too increasingly as well. What I did not like about the books was that she spent too many chapters philosophizing about life and death ("what is life; what is death...what makes a person a person...what constitutes identity et al...") For fans of Caitlin Doughty, Mary Roach, Kathy Reichs, and CSI shows, a renowned forensic scientist on death and mortality.

I think a good subtitle for this book would be something along he lines of "How to Read a Dead Body Like a History Book about the Life of That Specific Person." An engrossing memoir . . . an affecting mix of personal and professional' ( Erica Wagner , Financial Times) Part memoir, part science, part meditation on death, her book is compassionate, surprisingly funny, and it will make you think about death in a new light. Readers who expect a precise in-depth recitation of her work on bodies will be disappointed. She details only the essential science, with edited descriptions of her examinations of bodies. I believe she edits the autopsies because they are of real people with living relatives. Besides, many of us ordinary general readers probably couldn’t handle too much of graphic medical narratives, although she does get into general descriptions of rotting bodies, and of bodies having been torn apart or damaged, and the smells and appearances of a dead body. She mixes quite a lot into her autobiography her feelings and thoughts - perhaps too often and over-the-top, imho. She really wants to put across to readers her concern for the proper respectful handling of the bodies. She never loses sight of the fact that the bodies were people.I'm not going to lie, but this book made my spine tingle, profusely. A book based on the matter of death, probably shouldn't excite and intrigue a being as much as it has, but that day, earlier this year, when I bought this book in Waterstones, I had my Mum with me at the time, and although we have similar tastes, she has been known to raise that right eyebrow at some of mine. And what if you want to live, but other people decide you have no value, that you're a "useless feeder" as Hitler termed it. What if your family can't afford the financial burden of caring for you? What if the government decides they can't fit your care into the budget? This is already the case with socialized medicine. Thousands of Canadians can attest to the fact that they are receiving treatment in the U.S. because they didn't qualify for treatment in their own country. The last two thirds make for a solid, but not outstanding, addition to a shelf about death. Just know that you can gloss over the aforementioned sections and you won't miss a thing. One might expect [this book] to be a grim read but it absolutely isn’t. I found it invigorating! Andrew Marr, BBC Radio 4 'Start the Week'