PASSING ON

Judith Flanders, Rites of Passage: Death and Mourning in Victorian Britain, Picador, 2024.

‘Don’t be so morbid!’ is usually the reaction to any spontaneous discussion of death and dying in the 21st century. For example, bringing up the subject of funerals arrangements while in good health is thought of as the province of those guilt-inducing TV advertisements for funeral plans, themselves usually shown on channels dedicated to old stuff for wrinklies. 

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DEBATABLE DEATH

Sharon Rushton. The Science of Life and Death in Frankenstein. Bodleian Library Publishing, 2021.

There have been any number of books, some reviewed in Magonia, which have examined the story of Frankenstein’s ‘creature’ from various perspectives: as an aspect of folklore and popular belief, as a literary theme, as a popular cultural icon. This book looks at Mary Shelley’s masterpiece as a presentation of the medical and scientific controversies of the era in which it was written.

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NAVIGATING NOWHERE

Emma Gee, Mapping the Afterlife: From Homer to Dante, Oxford University Press, 2020

This isn’t a book about the reality or otherwise of the afterlife, or beliefs about life after death in general. It’s a study of how the afterlife is presented in a selection of classical (and one medieval) works, chosen to ‘represent particular stations in the period from Homer to Dante’. Which is fine as far as it goes – but how far is that?

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WHAT TO DO IN MAGONIA WHEN YOU'RE DEAD

Schlieter. What Is It Like To Be Dead? Near-Death Experiences, Christianity and The Occult. Oxford University Press. 2018.

Schlieter is a professor of 'the systematic study of religion' at the University of Bern in Switzerland. He has a penchant for comparative religions and connections between philosophies. This book is dense and unillustrated so not a particularly easy read – although not impenetrable. 

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LIVING WITH DEATH

Seneca. How to Die - An Ancient Guide to The End of Life. Selected and translated by James Romm. Princeton University Press, 2018.

I didn’t expect to be writing a review of Seneca’s thoughts about dying and be compelled to refer to the ingestion of hallucinogenic mushrooms. Well I am for two good reasons. (a) They are mentioned, in the introduction to How to Die, by editor James S. Romm: the reason being a psychedelic experience where you “stared directly at death…in a kind of dress rehearsal.”

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STILL SEARCHING

Michael Shermer. Heavens on Earth, the Scientific Search for the Afterlife, Immortality and Utopia. Robinson, 2018.

This book is in many ways fascinating, at one point ghoulish, and finishes with a chapter, which fails to persuade me in favour of the author’s views. 

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HOLY DEATH

Tracey Rollin. Santa Muerte. The History, Rituals and Magic of Our Lady of Holy Death. Weiser Books,  2017.

How-to-do-it books on magic, almost unobtainable a generation ago, are a growth industry. Those in English, at least, are rooted in the practices of the Golden Dawn and Wicca, even when some quite different slant is ostensibly given to them, such as ‘Practical Egyptian Magic’.

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INTO THE GRAVEYARD TOGETHER

Chris Woodyard (Editor), The Ghost Wore Black: Ghastly Tales from the Past. Kestrel Publications.

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Chris Woodyard (Editor), The Victorian Book of the Dead. Kestrel Publications.

‘Soon it will be dusk. I have the dark lantern, the shovel, the hook, the sack. Let us go into the graveyard together.’ So declares Chris Woodyard, the selector and editor of the ghostly – nay, ‘ghastly’ – tales presented in The Ghost Wore Black. Should one have the nerve to accompany him, then clearly he’s the perfect companion and leader.
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BACK FROM THE DEAD

Sam Parnia, with Josh Young. The Lazarus Effect. The Science That Is Erasing the Boundary Between Life and Death. Rider, 2013

This is a book in two parts; the first part is the scientific part, the one that explores the dramatic new breakthroughs in bringing back people from what is traditionally assumed to be death, after much longer periods than used to be thought possible. It was these techniques that lay behind the astonishing survival of the footballer Fabrice Muamba last year, a survival essentially due to the coincidental presence of a leading cardiac consultant in the crowd.
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TEATIME WITH THE DEAD

Christian Day. The Witches’ Book of the Dead, Weiser Books, 2011.

This book comes with its own in-built health warning – unfortunately at the end, rather than the beginning, when it’s far too late to protect yourself. Author Christian Day lists the horrors that came upon him as he struggled to finish it: death (appropriately enough) of close loved ones, debilitating injuries and resurfacing of old enemies.
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JOURNEY'S END

Chris Impey. How it Ends: From You to the Universe. W. W. Norton, 2010

Just to cheer you up in this time of recession, here is a book on life and death, mainly the latter, from our own death, (which if we suffer from cardiac arrest, will be hastened by an over liberal application of neurone-frazzling oxygen, ice packs are better), through the extinction of species including our own, through the extinction of life on earth, the death of the earth, the sun, the galaxy and the cold, cold decay of the universe.
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NASTY LEGENDS, URBAN RUMOURS

Gillian Bennett. Bodies: Sex, Violence, Disease and Death in Contemporary Legend. University Press of Mississipi, 2005

Though some time has elapsed since this book was published, it has only just come to my attention and is sufficiently important to note. In many respects this book marks a sharp contrast to Gillian Bennett's first book Traditions of Belief. which looked at the ghostlore of middle aged women in Greater Manchester, rather gentle and comforting traditions and experiences. This volume, to the contrary, deals with the dark side of contemporary legend.
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