My Father's Wake: How the Irish Teach Us to Live, Love and Die
Kevin Toolis
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Death is a whisper in the Anglo-Saxon world. But on a remote island, off the coast of County Mayo, it has a louder voice. The local radio station runs a thrice-daily roll-call of the recently departed. The islanders keep vigil with the corpse and share in the sorrow of the bereaved. The living and the dead are bound together in the oldest rite of humanity. In My Father's Wake, Kevin Toolis gives an intimate, eye-witness account of the death and wake of his father, celebrating the spiritual depth of the Irish Wake and asking if we too can find a better way to deal with our mortality, by living and loving in the acceptance of death.
Read MorePraise for My Father's Wake
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A broadside against collective [death] denial. In its alternating shifts of focus, from the intimately personal to the more journalistically detached, it lays bare the desperate numbness that accompanies that denial - OBSERVERPowerful and immensely moving - THE SUNDAY TIMESToolis writes superbly...it's as a memoir that this engrossing book works best - MAIL ON SUNDAY
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