A review by siria
Still Life with Bones by Alexa Hagerty

challenging dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.25

A powerful and difficult look at the work involved in, and the meaning underpinning, the recovery of the remains of the Disappeared. Alexa Hegarty here recounts her work as a forensic anthropologist in Guatemala and Argentina, two countries marked by horrific dictatorial violence in the twentieth century. Individuals and sometimes whole communities were tortured and massacred, their remains dumped in mass graves or tossed down wells or dumped out at sea. When it's even possible to recover these remains—the sea tends to keep its secrets; some wells plumb too deep to be excavated safely—restoring their names to them is another very difficult task. Still Life with Bones is an absorbing and elegiac account of the terror that the state can inflict, and the choices that people make in the face of it; Hagerty's commitment to a grassroots, community-focused recovery process is admirable. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Torture, Child death, Murder, Police brutality, Genocide, Grief, and Kidnapping