The Inevitable: Contemporary Writers Confront Death

When editors Shields (The Thing About Life Is One Day You'll Be Dead) and Morrow (The Diviner's Tale) approached 20 writers with the idea for this anthology, their requirements were simple: address the subject of death and "speak about the unspeakable." What resulted is a collection of extraordinary essays ranging from the life cycles of flies to reflections on a '70s-era porn film, the "romance of old cemeteries," and "ghost bikes" as memorials to traffic victims. In one essay, Diane Ackerman (Dawn Light) describes "the sudden monstrous subtraction" she felt on learning of a close friend's death. Sallie Tisdale (Women of the Way: Discovering 2,500 Years of Buddhist Wisdom) points out, "It is our peculiar punishment that we know things change and we want this to be otherwise." Often poetic and at times funny or gruesome while exposing raw grief, the writers—Mark Doty, Jonathan Safran, Geoff Dyer, Annie Dillard, to name a few—tackle the subject of death with honesty and courage. (Feb.)