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Reviews tagging 'Suicide'
A Tomb With a View: The stories & glories of graveyards by Peter Ross
5 reviews
thechroniclesofsiania's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief and Death
Minor: Death of parent, Drug use, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, Violence, Cancer, Car accident, Addiction, Alcohol, Blood, Body horror, Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, Child death, Drug abuse, Alcoholism, Miscarriage, and Mental illness
styxx's review against another edition
funny
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
3.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death and Grief
Minor: Addiction, Terminal illness, Violence, Death of parent, Pandemic/Epidemic, Drug use, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide
tradepaperback's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide attempt and Suicide
Minor: Murder, Alcoholism, and Addiction
leanneymu's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
A beautifully-written book about the rituals of death, and the celebration of lives past. Incredibly uplifting and a must-read for anyone interested in social history.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide and Death
_inge's review against another edition
3.0
The structure, or lack of it I should say, really bothered me in this book. The chapters seem to be divided by elements on graveyards, like an ankh or angels, but then other chapters had titles like ‘Peter’ (to discuss the live and grave of this Peter) and ‘Skulls’ (to discuss a church with an ossuary). Throughout reading this I wondered what the purpose of this book was, beyond stressing graveyards are ‘fun’. But even this isn’t made explicitly clear. There’s no conclusion, and I’m really not sure what I’m meant to take away from this.
The contents of the chapters themselves also lacked in structure; the author would describe graveyards in Scotland, England, Ireland and Northern Ireland, but never made it clear where he was. This is probably due to the fact I’m not from Britain and often didn’t know which places he referred to, but I really wouldn’t know that ‘Crossbones’ is a London graveyard if I hadn’t Googled it whilst reading that chapter. He would then discuss lots of different graves on these graveyards, sometimes describing an entire biography of one person who was buried there, before moving onto the next grave. This was usually not evenly done, so you’d sometimes read a brief mention about someone but then move on and suddenly read lots of pages about another person. Inbetween this are chats the author had with people visiting these graves. If this was the structure throughout this book it would’ve been a bit confusing, but still fine. However, the other chapters really varied from this. It often felt like the chapters didn’t have anything in common, and were mostly short essays/stories about the author’s experiences at graveyards. Some chapters wouldn’t describe specific graves at all, but focus on special events which take place at graveyards, or research that’s being conducted there. This book therefore read like a stream of consciousness, in which the author described his experiences at different graveyards however he remembered them, and throwing in some fun facts for good measure.
This is such a shame, as there were a lot of interesting fun facts in this. I loved learning that John Knox is now buried underneath a parking lot in Edinburgh, for instance. Going into this I’d hoped I’d learn more about the symbols on gravestones and what they tell us, but this book was more a journalistic overview in which the author visited lots of graveyards and discussed death with people there. A lot of these segments could have been interesting in a publication on death in a more general sense, for instance discussing how we perceive it. Instead this turned into a stream of consciousness about the author and his love of graveyards. The anecdotes were interesting, but they were buried (pun not intended) underneath heaps of often unnecessary details.
The contents of the chapters themselves also lacked in structure; the author would describe graveyards in Scotland, England, Ireland and Northern Ireland, but never made it clear where he was. This is probably due to the fact I’m not from Britain and often didn’t know which places he referred to, but I really wouldn’t know that ‘Crossbones’ is a London graveyard if I hadn’t Googled it whilst reading that chapter. He would then discuss lots of different graves on these graveyards, sometimes describing an entire biography of one person who was buried there, before moving onto the next grave. This was usually not evenly done, so you’d sometimes read a brief mention about someone but then move on and suddenly read lots of pages about another person. Inbetween this are chats the author had with people visiting these graves. If this was the structure throughout this book it would’ve been a bit confusing, but still fine. However, the other chapters really varied from this. It often felt like the chapters didn’t have anything in common, and were mostly short essays/stories about the author’s experiences at graveyards. Some chapters wouldn’t describe specific graves at all, but focus on special events which take place at graveyards, or research that’s being conducted there. This book therefore read like a stream of consciousness, in which the author described his experiences at different graveyards however he remembered them, and throwing in some fun facts for good measure.
This is such a shame, as there were a lot of interesting fun facts in this. I loved learning that John Knox is now buried underneath a parking lot in Edinburgh, for instance. Going into this I’d hoped I’d learn more about the symbols on gravestones and what they tell us, but this book was more a journalistic overview in which the author visited lots of graveyards and discussed death with people there. A lot of these segments could have been interesting in a publication on death in a more general sense, for instance discussing how we perceive it. Instead this turned into a stream of consciousness about the author and his love of graveyards. The anecdotes were interesting, but they were buried (pun not intended) underneath heaps of often unnecessary details.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death and Animal death
Minor: Suicide
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