This really is quite a good book. If I have any problems with it, it's only that I oddly know too much about this topic, so I did a bit of skimming. I'm very jealous that the author already has her Ghanaian coffin; but then again, that just means I still get to enjoy planning mine. ( )

I absolutely loved this one--so much so that I would be keeping my copy if I had it in print instead of as an ebook.

What elevates Murray's book about our rituals and practices surrounding death are not only her excellent prose but her frankness about her own very personal thoughts. She's using her work on this book to make decisions about what she would like to happen to her remains after she dies, and that would be enough to reasonably hold this book together...but she opens herself up even more, recounting her family's experience with her father's death and his post-death wishes. "Fa", as her family called him, was insistent that he could not care less what became of his "organic matter" after death, but when the end came, it turned out that he did have a few no-fuss requests of his own. In contemplating this change of mind and the decidedly much-fuss funeral practices that take place around the world, Murray turns what could have been a very factual report (my chief beef with Nine Pints) into colorful, textured descriptions of contemporary practices and historical stories into an intimate discussion. Mother and middle sister forgive me, but I would have to say that I appreciated this mix of personal reflection and descriptive reporting even more than I've enjoyed Mary Roach's work.

Looking at the chapters, you'd think it's fairly straightforward: each one is dedicated to a different death tradition that Murray traveled to experience, from magnificent funerary pyres in Bali (I think I once saw part of one) to national days of mourning in Iran. But she uses her experiences as starting points for larger discussions. Her trip to the Capuchin catacombs in Sicily pulls in thoughts about preserving bodies, with a major focus on the U.S.'s obsession with open casket funerals and the mega-industry around keeping bodies fresh for display. A visit to an English cemetery in Calcutta, India, allows for reflection about the places we choose (or have not choice but) to have our moral remains end up. And a trip to experience Day of the Dead festivities in Oaxaca, Mexico, opens up thoughts about secondary death practices--that is, memorials large and small that take place after the first round is done. As a result, we learn so much more about so many different cultures than you'd expect to just by looking at the table of contents. Can I get a "wahoo"?

There's so much to experience in Making an Exit that I just can't do a proper summary. All I can say is, for the nonfiction lovers and, perhaps, the slightly morbid, I highly recommend this one!

Quote Roundup

This is probably just going to be more of a grab-bag of items I found interesting than an actual list of quotes.

p. 20) This is totally irrelevant to the subject, but apparently some doors in old houses in Iran have knockers that make different sounds depending on whether a man or woman was visiting, so that women would know whether they needed to cover themselves before going to the door.

p. 36) ...old Hebrew proverb: "Say not in grief 'he is no more' but live in thankfulness that he was."

p. 66) In light of all the unusual-to-many-readers locations and traditions that Murray sees, I really appreciated this thought:
To my mind, such a theatrical display of mortality in all its glory puts this particular death rite [open coffin funerals] high up there on the list of the world's most exotic funeral ceremonies. ... There, in the middle of the room, is a corpse--an actual dead body--fully dressed and made up to look as if it's simply sleeping. To me, this seems every bit as outlandish as the Sicilian idea of leaving mummies hanging in a crypt in Victorian finery.

p. 86) George Hancock, a nineteenth-century Virginian plantation owner, is thought to have been buried sitting upright so he could continue to watch his slaves at work in the valley below.
F@#% you, George Hancock!

p. 91) Those who like the buy-now-die-later option can purchase coffins that serve as pieces of furniture in the interim.
Call me morbid (Areg already did, with a grin and a laugh), but I kind of like this idea! Murray commissions a colorful coffin from a Ghanaian carpenter, shaped as the Empire State Building but painted in the colors of her favorite painting (p. 103). Isn't that lovely?

p. 93) Artist Margareta Kern did a series called Clothes for Death in which she photographed women in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina with the clothes that they make and decorate for themselves, in which they want to be buried.

p. 99) In a discussion of environmentally-friendly burials, Murray mentions a plain wooden coffin company that advertises that family and friends can write on and customize the outside of the coffin before burial. Pretty neat idea!

p. 128) I love this sweet little story that Murray tells: While in Hong Kong for Qing Ming, when folks tend to family graves and burn paper goods for their families to use in the afterlife, she notices that many people are wrapped up in technology and not actually paying much attention to the dead. Then she realizes that one woman flipping through photos on her phone had turned it around to face the grave marker and was excitedly introducing her parents to their great-grandchild.

p. 133) And I love this tradition from a small collection of Philippine villages: the corpse is kept in a chair for a few days (okay, that part sounds yuck) so that people can come have final conversations...including angry airing of grievances!

p. 144) The New York Society for Ethical Culture--which describes itself as a "humanist religious community"...was founded in 1876 by Felix Adler, a Jewish intellectual who felt the need for a new religion that focused on ethics rather than doctrine, one open to diverse forms of belief.

p. 151-152) Murray's book comes close to home with a discussion of Hart Island, which is apparently the biggest "potter's field" in the U.S. The final resting place of many people who were homeless and otherwise unclaimed, the island is closed to visitors--something that Cadillac Man had been lobbying to change, and which I hope will get more momentum now that so many people who died in the early days of the pandemic have been buried there as well. Murray also informs us that apparently inmates at Riker's Island build the coffins for these burials--"about 1500 adults and 1000 infants every year"--presumably for no pay.

p. 161) In the early days of Chinese immigration to the U.S., many immigrants arranged for their bodies to be returned to China after their death. After a short time in a shallow grave, When sufficient time had passed for the flesh to fall away, individuals with titles such as "Chief scraper and gatherer of the bones of dead Chinamen," as one account records it, would exhume the remains. The bones would be cleaned and counted and sent back home. What a job!

p. 174) In colonial Calcutta, because it took so long for mail to reach India that letter writers might keep up correspondence for months before getting the news that the intended recipient had died, a special "Dead Letter Office" was arranged to handle these postmortem missives.

p. 176) Apparently you can get your cremains (cremated remains) turned into a firework! How cool is that?

p. 197-198) Since I volunteered for so long at the soup kitchen run out of St. Francis Xavier, I found this interesting:
The relic of St. Francis Xavier, the sixteenth-century Jesuit missionary to India, has been hauled across several continents. In 1614, he lost an arm when it was sent to Rome as evidence in the case for his canonization (it's still there, in the Church of the Gesu). His humerus, or funny bone, is in Macau. And when in 1975 his body was processed around Goa, India, in the ten-yearly "exposition of the relic" (a tradition in the nineteenth century), a few toes and other bits were also reported missing.

p. 212) Also pretty off-topic to the book but of interest in the moment: apparently there were *two* types of plague that we now consider the Black Death: "one affecting the bloodstream and spread by contact with infected individuals, the other attacking the lungs and spread by respiratory infection". Having just lived through one pandemic, I hope that I never have to live through two at once!

p. 229) Only in the last chapter does Murray discuss the environmentally-friendly alternative to cremation, alkaline hydrolysis (which I believe Mary Roach covered in more detail in Stiff): liquid alkaline accelerates decay to occur in just a few hours and can be converted into fertilizer. The bones left behind can be cremated without emissions. ( )

Given the book’s claim that the author was “Spanning continents and centuries, Making an Exit is Murray’s exploration of the extraordinary creativity unleashed when we seek to dignify the dead,’ I was hoping for a more anthropological review of the world’s death customs and traditions. Instead the author gives us a more National Geographical exploration, chapter by chapter, but yet a poorer version because it is lacking even photos. Oh well.

New arrival in the CCMS Library!