All the Living and the Dead: A Personal Investigation into the Death Trade

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How should we live, when death is always with us? All the Living and the Dead is a book about death, and how to stop pretending about it. Hayley Campbell is working out a philosophy of death by getting close to it; holding it; asking interesting questions of people who spend their lives dealing with it. This is an essential, compassionate, honest examination of how we deal with death, and how it changes the living.” — Audrey Niffenegger, author of The Time Traveler’s Wife An intriguing, candid, and frequently poignant book that asks what the business of death can teach all of us in the midst of life. Readers will form a connection with Campbell's voice as intimate as her own relationship with mortality." —Lindsey Fitzharris, bestselling author of The Butchering Art The series was created by Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes co-creator Ashley Pharoah. Pharoah's creative partner Matthew Graham was initially attached to the series, but withdrew prior to its production to work on Childhood's End for SyFy. [14] The series is directed by Alice Troughton and Sam Donovan. [2] Casting [ edit ] I enjoyed reading most of the book except for mental issues the author had with a dead baby. The baby's corpse was being washed, quite tenderly, and when the mortuary attendant went to get a towel, it's face slipped under the water and the author got very anxious and wanted to rescue it from drowning. I think all of us would have had that reaction. Just as Campbell felt weighed down by what she learned and experienced, I too began to feel heavy and had to set this book down for a few weeks before returning to it. The overuse of hyphens throughout the writing also slowed me down a little.

Are all these strange events linked merely by coincidence, or is there something more sinister - more supernatural - going on at Shepzoy? The Living and the Dead is a British six-episode supernatural horror television series created by Ashley Pharoah. The plot revolves around Nathan Appleby (played by Colin Morgan) and his wife, Charlotte Appleby (played by Charlotte Spencer), whose farm is believed to be at the centre of numerous supernatural occurrences. [1] Cast [ edit ] Main cast [ edit ]

Introduction by Ashley Pharoah

Campbell’s book is more than a written narrative, it is a map across uneven and untraveled land. It’s [Campbell's] raw, unguarded honesty that takes her book beyond many others of similar subject. At times humorous and always informative, humanity sets All the Living and the Dead apart." ― The Wall Street Journal Author and journalist Hayley Campbell is not one who runs from death. For this book, she interviewed many people who work with the dead. These include: Embalmers, cremators, anatomical pathology technologists (yeh, I hadn't heard of them before either), grave diggers, executioners (countries like the US still have the barbaric death penalty, though most modern democracies have abolished it), and even a man who makes death masks. The ghostly apparitions in the village and Appleby's growing insanity are revealed to be the result of meddling by his great great granddaughter, a 21st century paranormal investigator haunted by the restless spirit of Appleby's drowned son. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling upon the Bog of Allen and, further westwards, falling into the waves. It was falling too upon every part of the churchyard where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay drifted on the crosses and headstones, on the spears of the gate, on the thorns. His soul swooned as he heard the snow falling through the universe and falling, like the descent of their end, upon all the living and the dead.

A deeply compelling exploration of the death industry and the people―morticians, detectives, crime scene cleaners, embalmers, executioners―who work in it and what led them there. Non-fiction is not my usual genre, but I like to expand my horizons once in a while and I am glad I chose this book to do so. It's very well written and fascinating. I really liked that she took a hands on approach during some of the interviews. One of the effects of this, of course, is that it becomes difficult to know when a particular word or phrase should be heard in the narrator’s voice or in the ‘voice’ of one of the characters. See the example of Gabriel’s ‘Generous tears’ below, for instance. The author wrote the book because she wondered how people who have made death their work manage it on a daily basis. “If the reason we’re outsourcing this burden is because it’s too much for us, how do they deal with it?” Campbell interviews many different people associated with death - a funeral director, the director of anatomical services at Mayo Clinic, an embalmer, a crime scene cleaner, a death mask maker, an executioner, anatomic pathology technologist, bereavement midwife, gravediggers, crematorium operator, and even people at a cryonics institute. I learned that there are many more people involved with death than I ever thought, and with their varied viewpoints, I also learned that it's far more than just a job to many of them. The care and respect they feel and show in their work is evident, even if it's work that most people will never see and may not be appreciated. There are a few morbid details, but Campbell gets involved in some of these details, such as dressing a corpse, handling a brain during an autopsy, and raking remains from the crematorium. This helps to make them seem just a little less morbid.

Hayley Campbell is a journalist who, like myself, is interested in the subject of death. The very notion of wanting to find out what happens to the human body when we are no longer here. I went from a fear of death as a child straight into an interest, a morbid curiosity some might say. But I think it’s important for us to remember that it is a nature, inevitable process.

This realisation arrived in the maelstrom of her crisis about her job. Conversations long ignored were now being had. When it was clear that both of her parents were going to survive, she saved some money, quit the art world and went to Ghana for a break. There she got typhoid and nearly died too. Ms. Campbell’s book is more than a written narrative, it is a map across uneven and untraveled land. It’s [Campbell's] raw, unguarded honesty that takes her book beyond many others of similar subject. At times humorous and always informative, humanity sets All the Living and the Dead apart." — Wall Street Journal On 5 June 2015, Colin Morgan and Charlotte Spencer were announced to join the cast. [2] [15] Filming [ edit ] In her spare time she became a Samaritan, volunteering to answer the phones at the charity that provides emotional support to those feeling lost or suicidal. But as her job became busier, as the travel kept her further away from home, her shifts would get missed or moved. ‘It made me very sad. I spent about two years just not having the answer. I was having a sort of quarter-life crisis.’ She knew she wanted to engage with regular people on the frontline of existence, to do something that mattered – birth, love or death, it wasn’t important which – but she couldn’t figure out how, or what, until life began to make the decision for her.On 12 August 2016, BBC had officially stated that the series would not be renewed for a second series. In her book, Campbell interviews a funeral director, director of anatomical services, death mask sculptor, disaster victim identification, crime scene cleaner, executioner, embalmer, anatomical pathology technologist, bereavement midwife, gravedigger, crematorium operator and an employee from the Cryonics Institute. The variety of people and jobs was well rounded and each employee provided a new aspect to consider. Hayley approaches this dark subject with care, kindness and respect. Which I think is really important. Overall, this is such an informative read and I would recommend it to anybody who may be curious. Of course some of the descriptions may be graphic but they are also educational. I feel like a book like this is helpful for me to process my own grief, throughout my 27 years of life I have lost many family members. I know how it feels to have death stare you in the face, an almost never ending reminder of our mortality. Many of us were confined to the personal space of our homes, we lived, ate and even worked in our homes shielded from the unpleasantness of illness and death. Some people went through the agony of not being able to be near loved ones in hospitals or adult living facilities due to fear of infection and when someone we knew died, we were likely to only experience the funeral on Zoom from a distance.

It's not at all what i was expecting. It's an extraordinary journey, through scenes and characters so chilling they have their own crystalline beauty. The writing is finely felt and full of life, Campbell always finding a way to look through horror, to see humanity. So many of the images in it are heart-stopping, and by the end I was surprised to find myself sobbing. It's superb.” ⁠— Rhik Samadder, author of I Never Said I Loved You A compassionate and compelling book. Fascinating and devastating in equal measure." —Charlie Gilmour, author of Featherhood A surprising fact I learned through reading this book: "After a violent death, there is no US government agency that comes to clean up the blood." I hadn't realized that the homeowner is responsible for either cleaning up themselves or employing a professional crime scene cleaner.

Reviews

Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers in the people who make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, she encounters mass fatality investigators, embalmers, and a former executioner who is responsible for ending sixty-two lives. She meets gravediggers who have already dug their own graves, visits a cryonics facility in Michigan, goes for late-night Chinese with a homicide detective, and questions a man whose job it is to make crime scenes disappear. All the Living and the Dead is an amazing book. As I get older, sign up for Medicare and begin to face my own mortality in a more serious way, I have looked for books to help with this process. There is not a lot out there, and I hesitated before requesting this book from Netgalley, but Hayley Campbell has written about death and the many different people associated with it so well that I found the book informative and beautiful. It’s that something glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. That sigh in your ear. It’s the worm in a cider apple. The maggots in the dead deer. The sound of a crow on a summer’s day. The villagers celebrate Halloween. The ghosts of Roundhead troops appear on the anniversary of a bloody English Civil War battle.