The Book of Resting Places : A Personal History of Where We Lay the Dead

"Mira y Lopez is a stunning writer and his debut book, a tender and adventurous exploration of the intimate distances we share with the dead, deserves to be widely read. Artful sentences mirror, page after page, his artful mind. With formal intelligence and quiet wit, he has found death to be a spur to reflection and wholehearted embrace of life. This is a book to savor." —Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Zoologies: On Animals and the Human Spirit In the aftermath of his father's untimely death and his family's indecision over what to do with the remains, Thomas Mira y Lopez became obsessed with the type and variety of places where we lay the dead to rest. The result is The Book of Resting Places , a singular collection of essays that weaves history, mythology, journalism, and personal narrative into the author's search for a place to process grief. Across three continents and ten different resting places, Mira y Lopez explores unusual hallowed... In the aftermath of his father's untimely death and his family's indecision over what to do with the remains, Thomas Mira y Lopez became obsessed with the type and variety of places where we lay the dead to rest. The result is The Book of Resting Places, a singular collection of essays that weaves history, mythology, journalism, and personal narrative into the author's search for a place to process grief. Across three continents and ten different resting places, Mira y Lopez explores unusual hallowed grounds. From the world's largest cryonics institute in southern Arizona, to a set of Roman catacombs being digested by modern bacteria, to his family's burial plots in the mountains outside Rio de Janeiro, to an 18th century desert cemetery that was relocated for the building of a modern courthouse, Mira y Lopez examines these overlooked spaces and what they tell us about ourselves and the passing of those we love--how we grieve them, and how we attempt to forget them. The Book of Resting Places 's invigorating blend of ideas creates a relief map of our memorials while opening up the liminal spaces created not only when someone dies, but when our memories of them also begin to pass. The Book of Resting Places is a roving elegy, a highly personal and startling dive into our personal and public underworlds--a meditation on the active and passive nature of memory, our variable states of grief, and our culture's inclination to turn a blind eye to what it cannot process. 'The Book of Resting Places is Mira y Lopez's account of his travels, from a cemetery to a crematorium to a cryonics company... He's looking for the good death, somewhere, anywhere.'—The New YorkerIn the aftermath of his father's untimely death and his family's indecision over what to do with the remains, Thomas Mira y Lopez became obsessed with the type and variety of places where we lay the dead to rest. The result is a singular collection of essays that weaves together history, mythology, journalism, and personal narrative into the author's search for a place to process grief.Mira y Lopez explores unusual hallowed grounds—from the world's largest cryonics institute in southern Arizona to a set of Roman catacombs being digested by modern bacteria, to his family's burial plots in the mountains outside Rio de Janeiro to a nineteenth–century desert cemetery that was relocated for the building of a modern courthouse. The Book of Resting Places examines these overlooked spaces and what they tell us about ourselves and the passing of those we love—how we grieve them, and how we attempt to forget them. In the aftermath of his father's untimely death and his family's indecision over what to do with the remains, Thomas Mira y Lopez became obsessed with the type and variety of places where we lay the dead to rest. The result is a singular collection of essays that weaves together history, mythology, journalism, and personal narrative into the author's search for a place to process grief. Mira y Lopez explores unusual hallowed grounds--from the world's largest cryonics institute in southern Arizona to a set of Roman catacombs being digested by modern bacteria, to his family's burial plots in the mountains outside Rio de Janeiro to a nineteenth-century desert cemetery that was relocated for the building of a modern courthouse. The Book of Resting Places examines these overlooked spaces and what they tell us about ourselves and the passing of those we love--how we grieve them, and how we attempt to forget them Memory, memorial Monument valley A plan for the afterlife Overburden The path to the saints Capricci The rock shop Parallax The eternal comeback Coda, codex. A Debut Collection Of Essays That Explores Where The Living Settles The Dead By A Stunning New Literary Voice