Book Review: The Undertaking

Reviewed By: Jennifer Jordan

The Undertaking     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Thomas Lynch
Class/Genre:   Non-Fiction   AutoBiography   [Short Stories]
1998, Penguin USA, Autobiography/Essays - 224 pages

Mr. Lynch is my latest and greatest writing hero. He writes of the life/death/life cycle that binds us all to each other and his muse seeks the meaning behind it all. In this illuminating, funny and poignant book we are generously invited into the inner workings of the mind of a man who has seen his share of tragedy and love.

As the son of an undertaker, he was raised in a household replete with instruction on what a funeral was really about. It didn't have as much to do with what was done to the dead as what the living do about those that have died. For him, the specter of death touched everything and encompassed marriage and love, children and poetry. His seemingly inevitable choice to become an undertaker himself is as natural to him as the need to ask the great why that leads to his incarnation as a poet. From the common sense inherent in living in the small town of Milford, Michigan to the broader wisdom that is born of a lifetime of reflection and experience, Mr. Lynch's essays from Words Made Flesh to the Golfatorium feed the soul and lift the heart. In Crapper, the advent of the flush toilet is juxtaposed with the unflinching truth about the realities of dying. As we read The Right Hand of My Father, we join Mr. Lynch and his brother as they go about the task of burying their father. This book is a celebration of the dismal trade and a reminder of all we are gifted with in life.

The dead, he reminds us, don't care.

Jennifer Jordan

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Jennifer Jordan