Download or read book The Country Funeral written by John McGahern and published by Faber Stories. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "My only concern", John McGahern once said, "is that I get the sentence right and describe my world clearly and deeply." 'The Country Funeral' witnesses three brothers, John, Philly and Fonsie Ryan, as they travel west from Dublin to Gloria Bog - the heart of the territory where so many of McGahern's stories take place - to attend the funeral of their uncle. Depicting the customs and rituals of the day, McGahern exquisitely traces how the brothers react to the area in unexpected and tender ways, and face their own feelings about the transience of life.
Download or read book Annie Freeman s Fabulous Traveling Funeral written by Kris Radish and published by Listening Library. This book was released on 2006 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annie Freeman, left one final request, a traveling funeral, and she wants the most important women in her life as pallbearers. From Sonoma to Manhattan, Katherine, Laura, Rebecca, Jill, and Marie will carry Annie's ashes to the special places in her life. At every stop there's a surprise encounter and a small miracle waiting, and as they whoop it up across the country, attracting interest wherever they go, they share their deepest secrets--tales of broken hearts and second chances, missed opportunities and new beginnings. And as they grieve over what they've lost, they discover how much is still possible if only they can unravel the secret Annie left them.
Download or read book The American Way of Death Revisited written by Jessica Mitford and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-11-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only the scathing wit and searching intelligence of Jessica Mitford could turn an exposé of the American funeral industry into a book that is at once deadly serious and side-splittingly funny. When first published in 1963, this landmark of investigative journalism became a runaway bestseller and resulted in legislation to protect grieving families from the unscrupulous sales practices of those in "the dismal trade." Just before her death in 1996, Mitford thoroughly revised and updated her classic study. The American Way of Death Revisited confronts new trends, including the success of the profession's lobbyists in Washington, inflated cremation costs, the telemarketing of pay-in-advance graves, and the effects of monopolies in a death-care industry now dominated by multinational corporations. With its hard-nosed consumer activism and a satiric vision out of Evelyn Waugh's novel The Loved One, The American Way of Death Revisited will not fail to inform, delight, and disturb. "Brilliant--hilarious. . . . A must-read for anyone planning to throw a funeral in their lifetime."--New York Post "Witty and penetrating--it speaks the truth."--The Washington Post
Download or read book The Funeral Party written by Ludmila Ulitskaya and published by Schocken. This book was released on 2010-12-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: August 1991. In a sweltering New York City apartment, a group of Russian émigrés gathers round the deathbed of an artist named Alik, a charismatic character beloved by them all, especially the women who take turns nursing him as he fades from this world. Their reminiscences of the dying man and of their lives in Russia are punctuated by debates and squabbles: Whom did Alik love most? Should he be baptized before he dies, as his alcoholic wife, Nina, desperately wishes, or be reconciled to the faith of his birth by a rabbi who happens to be on hand? And what will be the meaning for them of the Yeltsin putsch, which is happening across the world in their long-lost Moscow but also right before their eyes on CNN? This marvelous group of individuals inhabits the first novel by Ludmila Ulitskaya to be published in English, a book that was shortlisted for the Russian Booker Prize and has been praised wherever translated editions have appeared. Simultaneously funny and sad, lyrical in its Russian sorrow and devastatingly keen in its observation of character, The Funeral Party introduces to our shores a wonderful writer who captures, wryly and tenderly, our complex thoughts and emotions confronting life and death, love and loss, homeland and exile.
Download or read book The Doll Funeral written by Kate Hamer and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[Evokes] both Jeanette Winterson and Ian McEwan . . . an elegiac and uplifting novel about the indissoluble bonds between mothers and daughters, and a reminder of how the imagination can set you free.” — The Guardian On Ruby’s thirteenth birthday, a wish she didn’t even know she had suddenly comes true: the couple who raised her aren’t her parents at all. Her real mother and father are out there somewhere, and Ruby becomes determined to find them. Venturing into the forest with nothing but a suitcase and the company of her only true friend—the imaginary Shadow Boy—Ruby discovers a group of siblings who live alone in the woods. The children take her in, and while they offer the closest Ruby’s ever had to a family, Ruby begins to suspect that they might need her even more than she needs them. And it’s not always clear what’s real and what’s not—or who’s trying to help her and who might be a threat. Told from shifting timelines, and the alternating perspectives of teenage Ruby; her mother, Anna; and even the Shadow Boy, The Doll Funeral is a dazzling follow-up to Kate Hamer’s breakout debut, The Girl in the Red Coat, and a gripping, exquisitely mysterious novel about the connections that remain after a family has been broken apart.
Download or read book Spectacle of Grief written by Sarah J. Purcell and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2022-02-16 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This illuminating book examines how the public funerals of major figures from the Civil War era shaped public memories of the war and allowed a diverse set of people to contribute to changing American national identities. These funerals featured lengthy processions that sometimes crossed multiple state lines, burial ceremonies open to the public, and other cultural productions of commemoration such as oration and song. As Sarah J. Purcell reveals, Americans' participation in these funeral rites led to contemplation and contestation over the political and social meanings of the war and the roles played by the honored dead. Public mourning for military heroes, reformers, and politicians distilled political and social anxieties as the country coped with the aftermath of mass death and casualties. Purcell shows how large-scale funerals for figures such as Henry Clay and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson set patterns for mourning culture and Civil War commemoration; after 1865, public funerals for figures such as Robert E. Lee, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, and Winnie Davis elaborated on these patterns and fostered public debate about the meanings of the war, Reconstruction, race, and gender.
Download or read book Burial for a King written by Rebecca Burns and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-01-04 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, riots broke out in 110 cities across the country. For five days, Atlanta braced for chaos while preparing to host King’s funeral. An unlikely alliance of former student radicals, the middle-aged patrician mayor, the no-nonsense police chief, black ministers, white churchgoers, Atlanta’s business leaders, King’s grieving family members, and his stunned SCLC colleagues worked to keep Atlanta safe, honor a murdered hero, and host the tens of thousands who came to pay tribute. On April 9, 1968, 150,000 mourners took part in a daylong series of rituals honoring King—the largest funeral staged for a private U.S. citizen. King’s funeral was a dramatic event that took place against a national backdrop of war protests and presidential politics in a still-segregationist South, where Georgia’s governor surrounded the state capitol with troops and refused to lower the flag in acknowledgment of King’s death. Award-winning journalist Rebecca Burns delivers a riveting account of this landmark week and chronicles the convergence of politicians, celebrities, militants, and ordinary people who mourned in a peaceful Atlanta while other cities burned. Drawing upon copious research and dozens of interviews— from staffers at the White House who dealt with the threat of violence to members of King’s family and inner circle—Burns brings this dramatic story to life in vivid scenes that sweep readers from the mayor’s office to the White House to Coretta Scott King’s bedroom. Compelling and original, Burial for a King captures a defining moment in America’s history. It encapsulates King’s legacy, America’s shifting attitude toward race, and the emergence of Atlanta as a new kind of Southern city.
Download or read book Chopin s Funeral written by Benita Eisler and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Frédéric Chopin’s reputation as one of the Great Romantics endures, but as Benita Eisler reveals in her elegant and elegiac biography, the man was more complicated than his iconic image. A classicist, conservative, and dandy who relished his conquest of Parisian society, the Polish émigré was for a while blessed with genius, acclaim, and the love of Europe’s most infamous woman writer, George Sand. But by the age of 39, the man whose brilliant compositions had thrilled audiences in the most fashionable salons lay dying of consumption, penniless and abandoned by his lover. In the fall of 1849, his lavish funeral was attended by thousands—but not by George Sand. In this intimate portrait of an embattled man, Eisler tells the story of a turbulent love affair, of pain and loss redeemed by art, and of worlds—both private and public—convulsed by momentous change.
Download or read book Funeral Practices and the Elderly written by United States. Congress. House. Select Committee on Aging. Subcommittee on Housing and Consumer Interests and published by . This book was released on 1982 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book FDR s Funeral Train written by Robert Klara and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2010-03-16 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The April 1945 journey of FDR's funeral train became a thousand-mile odyssey, fraught with heartbreak and scandal. As it passed through the night, few of the grieving onlookers gave thought to what might be happening behind the Pullman shades, where women whispered and men tossed back highballs. Inside was a Soviet spy, a newly widowed Eleanor Roosevelt, who had just discovered that her husband's mistress was in the room with him when he died, all the Supreme Court justices, and incoming president Harry S. Truman who was scrambling to learn secrets FDR had never shared with him. Weaving together information from long-forgotten diaries and declassified Secret Service documents, journalist and historian Robert Klara enters the private world on board that famous train. He chronicles the three days during which the country grieved and despaired as never before, and a new president hammered out the policies that would galvanize a country in mourning and win the Second World War.
Download or read book Funeral Diva written by Pamela Sneed and published by City Lights Books. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 119 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Funeral Diva is the Winner of the Lambda Award for Lesbian Poetry! A poetic memoir about coming-of-age in the AIDS era, and its effects on life and art. "Sneed is an acclaimed reader of her own poetry, and the book has the feeling of live performance. . . . Its strength is in its abundance, its desire for language to stir body as well as mind."—Parul Sehgal, The New York Times Book Review "She is a writer for the future, in that she defies genre."—Hilton Als "This notable achievement, traveling from youth to adulthood, is a harrowing account of how Sneed transforms violence and pain into an artist's life."—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American Lyric "There's an eerie sense of timeliness to this book, which features prose and poetry by the writer and teacher Pamela Sneed and is largely — though not entirely — about mourning Black gay men killed too soon by a deadly virus."—Tomi Obaro, Buzzfeed "OH MY GOODNESS, it was amazing. I was in tears by the end. What starts off as beautiful memoir evolves into incredibly moving poetry, painful and sweet and lovely."—Marie Cloutier, Greenlight Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY "Balancing and mixing, with rhyme and reason, love and anger, good and bad, memory and the created present, all to tell the story of a life, a memoir unrestrained, devoid of artificial forms. Honest. Free."—Anjanette Delgado, New York Journal of Books In this collection of personal essays and poetry, acclaimed poet and performer Pamela Sneed details her coming of age in New York City during the late 1980s. Funeral Diva captures the impact of AIDS on Black Queer life, and highlights the enduring bonds between the living, the dying, and the dead. Sneed’s poems not only converse with lovers past and present, but also with her literary forebears—like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde—whose aesthetic and thematic investments she renews for a contemporary American landscape. Offering critical focus on matters from police brutality to LGBTQ+ rights, Funeral Diva confronts today's most pressing issues with acerbic wit and audacity. The collection closes with Sneed's reflections on the two pandemics of her time, AIDS and COVID-19, and the disproportionate impact of each on African American communities. "Riveting, personal, open-hearted, risky and wise."—Sarah Schulman, author of Conflict Is Not Abuse " . . . a tour de force about the collision between a coalescing 1980s 'Black lesbian and gay literary and poetic movement' in New York and the onslaught of AIDS."—Donna Seaman, Booklist "Pamela Sneed's Funeral Diva is deft, defiant, and devastating."—Tommy Pico, author of Feed "Funeral Diva is urgent and necessary reading to live by. This is writing at its finest. Keep this book close to your heart and soul."—Karen Finley, author of Shock Treatment "Reminiscent of Audre Lorde’s Zami, Pamela Sneed’s memoir is, in itself, a healing balm, affirming in its truths and honesty. I cannot remember ever reading a book that illustrates the impact of the AIDS epidemic on our community more poignantly than Funeral Diva."—Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Patsy "Pamela Sneed takes enormous risks in this book. She tells the truth with fierce concentration and an abiding sense of purpose.”—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina
Download or read book Funeral Culture written by Casey Golomski and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-04 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary forms of living and dying in Swaziland cannot be understood apart from the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, according to anthropologist Casey Golomski. In Africa's last absolute monarchy, the story of 15 years of global collaboration in treatment and intervention is also one of ordinary people facing the work of caring for the sick and dying and burying the dead. Golomski's ethnography shows how AIDS posed challenging questions about the value of life, culture, and materiality to drive new forms and practices for funerals. Many of these forms and practicesnewly catered funeral feasts, an expanded market for life insurance, and the kingdom's first crematoriumare now conspicuous across the landscape and culturally disruptive in a highly traditionalist setting. This powerful and original account details how these new matters of death, dying, and funerals have become entrenched in peoples' everyday lives and become part of a quest to create dignity in the wake of a devastating epidemic.
Download or read book Funeral Industry written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Death and Funeral Practices in Russia written by Sergei Mokhov and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-18 with total page 97 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Built on original ethnographic research conducted by the author, this book offers a highly detailed and comprehensive account of funerary history and practices in Russia. Death and Funeral Practices in Russia provides rich data on mortality statistics, trends in the funeral market in contemporary Russia, the legal framework of funerary practices, as well as regional and demographic disparities. The first part of the book presents an in-depth account of the historical development of funerary practice in Russia, charting the emergence and evolution of funeral traditions and customs in the country from the Russian Empire to the collapse of the USSR. Having explored the wider historical context surrounding funerary culture in Russia, the second part of the book explores the key features of the funeral industry in post-Soviet times, highlighting critical changes and areas of continuity. Topics explored include the death care industry in Russia, the key features of the typical funeral in the country, cemetery and crematorium provision, the technicalities and legalities of burial and cremation, and the illegal practices within the funeral market. A truly unique offering, the book is essential reading for academics, policy makers and practitioners interested in the history and legal, technical and professional aspects of the funerary industry in Russia.
Download or read book The Modern Funeral written by W. P. Hohenschuh and published by . This book was released on 1900 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Instructions for a Funeral written by David Means and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After winning international acclaim with his first novel, the Man Booker-nominated Hystopia, David Means returns to the form that made his name in Instructions for a Funeral, a collection of fourteen masterful stories that run the gamut from the playful to the personal. 'The Terminal Artist,' originally published in Vice, skirts reportage in grappling with the revelation that the death of a hospitalized loved one was in fact a murder; 'The Tree Line, Kansas, 1934,' from the New Yorker, is a wry anatomy of the moments before an FBI raid goes spectacularly wrong; while 'The Chair,' from The Paris Review, gives us a clear-eyed look at fatherhood, with all its paradoxes, recriminations, and rewards gloriously intact. Means's work has earned him comparisons to Flannery O'Connor, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Denis Johnson, Poe, Chekhov, and Carver - but his place in the American literary landscape is fully and originally his own.
Download or read book Funeral for a Friend written by Brian Freeman and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “You’re safe, Stride. I found the body at the Deeps. I buried him.” Jonathan Stride’s best friend, Steve Garske, makes a shocking deathbed confession: he protected Stride by covering up a murder. Hours later, the police dig up Steve’s yard and find a body with a bullet hole in its skull. Stride is pretty sure he knows who it is. Seven years ago, an out-of-town reporter disappeared while investigating anonymous allegations of rape against a prominent politician. Back then, the police believed that the reporter drowned at a dangerous swimming hole called the Deeps ... but the discovery of the body changes everything. Now Stride’s partner, Maggie Bei, is forced to ask Stride an uncomfortable question: Did you kill him? Stride is obviously hiding things. He was the last person to see the reporter alive. And he admits lying to Maggie about that meeting, but won’t tell her why. With suspicion in the murder pointing at him, Stride finds himself off the case and on leave from the Duluth Police. His only ally in clearing his name is his wife, Serena, who retraces the reporter’s investigation into the explosive allegations. The clues all point to a hot Duluth summer years earlier that everyone in town would prefer to forget. Someone was willing to kill rather than let those long-ago secrets come out, and the suspect with the strongest motive ... is Stride.
