A mixed bag... I've admired Lynch's writing since his earlier collection of essays, The Undertaking. He is a fine poet, and a writer with much of value to say about "being and ceasing to be" than most, from his lifetime of intimate contact in the family funeral business. Once you've read Lynch, you will never look at death and funeral planning and grief quite the same way: he is humane, blunt, practical, respectful, and wry. There are simply some things to be done, and he will do them... including the laying out and preparing of his own father's corpse, alongside his brothers who are "in the business" as well. Including standing as the lone witness to the confiding of the dead to the crematorium furnace, where he muses on why it is that 95% of his students have attended a graveside service, and nearly none of them have witnessed a cremation, when nearly half of today's deceased opt for the latter disposition. All subjects we would mostly prefer not to think about, but he makes them thinkable.

Less successful are the rambling, almost romantic chapters about Ireland and his Irish family - perhaps if you are Irish, you will nod in recognition and empathy. There is a moving chapter about his son's terrible bouts of alcoholism - it runs in his family, and he himself has so far successfully abjured it. And there is a perfectly horrid chapter about his too-nearly-violent loathing for a cat, which is tangled up with a bitter, and deeply angry divorce, and his son's almost desperate attachment to the cat - no animals get hurt here, but the rage is palpable and ugly.

Dip in and out, skip chapters that don't speak to you. But the ones that do, will linger in your head. ( )