Get Started On This Partys Dead Conceived By Erica Buist Released As Paper Edition

was an interesting read about how different cultures approach the concept of death, I found fascinating to realise that however one culture accepts death as part of life, death does not necessarily means the end of one's life, As an agnostic tending to atheism, I have found this characteristic particularly thought provoking, Thank you, Erica for the opportunity to read your book for free on Facebook, trigger warningview spoiler grief, death, depression, agoraphobia, panic attacks, mention of suicide, mention of terminal illnesses, mention of child death hide spoiler This Party's Dead by Erica Buist inhabits a space where memoirs both inform and frame a nonfiction informational book on a given topic.
This can be a dangerous area, some readers will not want the memoir parts and some would probably be happy with fewer facts and memoir and personal feelings, I found Buist to have found a nice place that will, I think, satisfy the vast majority of readers, just enough of each to complement the other, Her initial story, her future father in law dying and not being found for seven days, sets up both the premise for tour of death festivals as well as the issue of how people face death, their own and those of loved ones.
I found reading about her personal grief strategy or lack thereof helped to set up in broad terms how western society largely thinks about death, in particular the UK.
This opened the door for her questions she asked of the many people she met in her travels, She also acknowledges her privilege, namely gaining financial advantage from someone's death, which she admits to feeling uneasy with and undeserving of, The personal aspect of her journey physical, intellectual, and emotional worked very well for me, I found myself open to her questions and comments simply because she was speaking from a lot of experience and not just from reading she did on the topic.
Reading this will, or at least it did for me, make readers think about death in a nuanced way, Yet even by taking this journey with Buist, and experiencing these festivals largely through her eyes, we will all likely arrive at different destinations, Some traditions may speak to you than others, while others you may dismiss out of hand, Buist allows enough room in her narrative for readers to do this without feeling they are "opposing" her ideas or feelings, If there is one thing this book absolutely illustrates is that death is both the most personal and the most public thing most of us will experience, ed from a copy made available by the publisher via Edelweiss,.A cross between a memoir and a travel diary written in a colloquial style, full of humor to balance the heaviness of the subject, After having to deal with the unexpected grief of losing her future father in law, Erica sets off on a quest to visitfestivals dedicated to death/the dead.
Her aim is to see how others deal with death grief, hoping to learn how to better embrace the passing of loved ones and how to live with grief long term.
I really enjoyed 'accompanying' Erica on her journeys, especially that I haven't seen any of the destinations/festivals she covers in the book, I also loved the balance between objective descriptions/interviews and her personal experience, adding an bit of tenderness, much needed seen the subject, The reasons why I'm rating this at just,are this: firstly I am not British, I cannot pretend to understand their relationship with death and why they are or aren't doing whatever they're doing/suppose to be doing when death strikes, Therefore I cannot really have the same experience as a Brit upon reading this, and that was crystal clear as I've read this along with others as part of a reading group.
And secondly many of the customs presented in the pages of this book are not very far from the customs I am accustom to or I have seen/read about before.
Further I am used to having rituals surrounding the passing to another existencehopefully!, I have seen corpses since I can remembermy first memories of seeing a death person are from when I was aboutyears old, we have kept my grandfather's corpse in the house fordays as that's why we used to do, I remember my parental grandparents preparing everything for their death, including having their coffins made years in advance etc.
Nothing that might come as a surprise to a Brit, or consider taboo here and look at in the book surprised me, or forced me to look at death from a different perspective than my own.
So I guess it's safe to say that the lessons I was suppose to take away from the book were lost on me, lol, That being said, I do think this is a great book to read, especially if you are interested in the subject or want to learn / change your perspective about death.
Many thanks to ThePigeonHole Erica for the opportunity to read this, and again to Erica and the others for making reading this such a brill experience, I really enjoyed this non fiction account of Erica Buists visits to different death festivals in order to explore how different cultures deal with death and the dead, The book was born out of sad circumstances when Ericas father in law to be was found dead in the house they had previously shared, Erica found herself affected by his death in ways she hadnt expected, and those journeys give her a chance to consider her own responses to death, as well as those of others.
This book is sometimes sad, but also joyful, uplifting and thought provoking, We can definitely learn a thing or two from this book, Read with The Pigeonhole. I received a review copy from Unbound via NetGalley of This Partys Dead by Erica Buist, It is subtitled: Grief, Joy and Spilled Rum at the World's Death Festivals, Thank you also to The Pigeonhole for hosting a great group read with the author, Very likely discussion resulted. Spoiler Alert: We are all going to die, Following the sudden death of Chris, her fiancés father, Erica Buist finds herself overwhelmed by grief and the awareness that we are all going to die, This led to depression, agoraphobia, and her stalking friends online to ascertain whether any of them had also dropped dead without warning, Erica finds that she is unable to extract herself from this spiral of death anxiety until one day she decides to reclaim control, Her plan is to visit seven death festivals deathivals around the world to search for the answers to both fundamental and unexpected questions around death anxiety, Her travels begin in Mexico for their Day of the Dead festivities and then moves on to Nepal, Sicily, Thailand, Madagascar, Japan and finally Indonesia with a stopover in New Orleans.
This city has always held a fascination for me and it was interesting to learn of the macabre history of its cemeteries in which the swampy ground conditions had led to corpses unexpectedly popping up during theth Century.
This eventually led to the building of tombs above ground, This was an interesting memoir that was thought provoking, moving and yet quite amusing in places, These lighter anecdotes included Ericas near Bridget Jones moment of wandering obliviously through a TV news broadcast and her wondering if it was okay to take a selfie with a skull.
The book is both a personal journey as Erica deals with her anxieties about death and dying as well as asking broader questions about current attitudes, This has long been a subject of importance to me perhaps being self identified as a Goth it goes with the territory, I certainly found it interesting to encounter through Ericas eyes these various deathivals and learn about different cultures, Its a memoir that I would heartily recommend for its honesty and for addressing this very important subject, This is not my usual type of read, For a start it is a true account and a factual, as well as emotional, look at what is a taboo subject in our culture, Death, I am also terrified of death and have been since I was a young child, Maybe it is my phobia that drew me to the book in the first place, or maybe it was part of my fascination with a topic that has brought me so much emotional pain over the years.
Certainly there have been many points in my life when it would have been impossible for me to pick up and read such a book, Erica Buist is an honest and brave author in that she writes about her own personal grief, mourning the death of her not quite father in law Chris, which is the basis for her travels around the world to find out about how other cultures deal with death.
Erica herself admits to falling apart and finding that, because she wasn't married to her partner, there seemed to be no place for her overwhelming grief as an almost but not quite daughter in law.
Maybe the suddenness of Chris dying didn't help, and the way in which he was found, but whatever the actual reasons, this book highlights the fact that no matter what your relationship is with the deceased, grief knows no boundaries or rules and is extremely personal to each individual.
The book is thoroughly and extremely well researched but is not dry and dusty at all as it is full of Erica's personal reactions and responses to what she sees and what the guides and other people she meets in various countries tell her.
The interviews she conducted are woven into the narrative as if the reader is accompanying Erica on her quest to find out, It is so fascinating, a bit gruesome in places, but mostly uplifting in a way that makes you think we as a society have got death all wrong, Erica needed this journey and the subsequent writing of the book as a kind of therapy, in coming to terms with the varying ways we experience the death of a loved one.
As a reader we are part of that therapeutic process too, so not only did I learn a lot as I read This Party's Dead, I also found myself reflecting, questioning and understanding myself in

a way I wouldn't have experienced if I hadn't read the book.
Join Erica in the festivals, ceremonies, celebrations and parties that remember the people who no longer walk the earth but who remain special and loved inside of us, Well deserving of astar rating, .