This is a transcription of Cemetery: Celebrate Life, Honor the Dead
David: Hello. Welcome to Strong Sense of Place.
Melissa: In each episode, we focus on one destination and discuss what makes it different than any other place on Earth.
David: Then we recommend five books we love that took us there on the page.
Melissa: I’m Melissa Joulwan.
David: I’m David Humphreys.
David: We’re going around the world one great read at a time. Thanks for joining us.
[cheerful music]
David: Welcome to Strong Sense of Place. Today we get curious about the cemetery. I have a poem.
David: Isn’t that nice? It’s from Shakespeare. Cymbeline. If you’re listening to this on launch day, Mel an I are well into month two of our spooky season celebration.
David: Today in Two Truths and a Lie, we’ll talk about a mass transit system for the dead. Then we’ll talk about five books we love.
Melissa: I’m recommending a novel about the love story between two ghosts in a cemetery in the Bronx.
David: I have a book that will help you prepare for wearing the pine overcoat — signing up for the silent majority — going cold turkey on the oxygen habit. Today we’re going dark! Let’s start it up with the Cemetery 101.
Melissa: Before we begin, let’s talk terminology! In conversation, cemetery and graveyard are often used interchangeably. But there is a difference in the terms.
Melissa: A graveyard is a burial ground that’s associated with a church. In the Middle Ages, powerful or wealthy people were buried INSIDE the church — maybe in a crypt beneath the floor. The hoi polloi were interred OUTSIDE the church in what came to be called the graveyard.
Melissa: By the early 19th century, small church graveyards were filling up — what with diseases like tuberculosis, cholera, and typhoid fever. They needed to make room for new souls in consecrated ground. Sometimes, the bones were disinterred and moved to ossuaries. An ossuary is a chamber for storing bones — like the Paris Catacombs or the Sedlec Ossuary here in the Czech Republic.
Melissa: But in most cases, the problem was solved by building a cemetery — a larger burial space that was more like a park with rows of plots. Usually placed outside the town center and not affiliated with a particular church.
Melissa: So, graveyard: smaller, higgledy-piggledy layout, church. Cemetery: larger, laid out with plots, not church.
Melissa: Although we tend to think of graveyards as a place of reverence now, in the Middle Ages, the church graveyard was used as a venue for fairs and markets and even to graze cattle. The farmers thought the grass from the graveyard produced sweeter milk.
Melissa: The notion — the idea that hanging out around tombstones wasn’t weird — came back around in the 19th century. Cemeteries were like gardens with grassy lawns, majestic statues, and shade trees. There were bees and butterflies, foxes and deer, and, most importantly, a quiet vibe away from the bustle of the city.
Melissa: Cemeteries were a fashionable place to see and be seen.
Melissa: In 1860, The Green-Wood Cemetery in New York was competitive with Niagara Falls as the most popular tourist attraction in the US.
Melissa: On both sides of the Atlantic, families strolled along cemetery lanes, among the Gothic tombs and Egyptian-inspired mausoleums. On birthdays, anniversaries, or just a really nice day, they’d settle down on a blanket with a picnic basket packed with beef sandwiches, gingersnaps, and fruit. Cemetery picnics were a way to socialize with others above ground and spend time with departed loved ones. In the late 1880s, a young man told a newspaper reporter, ‘We’re going to keep Thanksgiving with our father as though he was as live and hearty this day as last year. We’ve brought something to eat and a spirit-lamp to boil coffee.’
Melissa: I should also mention that it’s not uncommon to celebrate the Mexican holiday dias de los muertos — days of the dead — with a picnic at a family member’s graveside. From October 28 to November 2, honor the departed loved ones by cleaning their graves, decorating them with candles and marigolds, singing, praying, and feasting on tamales, hot chocolate, sugar skulls, and a traditional sweet bread called pan de muerto or bread of the dead.
Melissa: Famous cemeteries like New Orleans’ St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and Pére Lachaise in Paris have pretty much always attracted tourists. Pére Lachaise gets 3.5 million visitors each year; that’s the same number of people who visit Paris’ Musée d’Orsay.
Melissa: A few weeks ago, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ published an article about the current rise in cemeteries as destinations for date night and tourism. There are community picnics, garden tours, artists in residence, and even movie nights.
Melissa: I didn’t realize that we were tombstone tourists until I started counting the burial spots we’ve visited. We’ve been to The Paris Catacombs and the Sedlec Bone Church. Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh and Pére Lachaise. Here in Prague, we’ve visited the Old Jewish Cemetery, Olšany Cemetery – where Franz Kafka is buried — and the Vyšehrad graveyard, which we walk through almost every day.
Melissa: I know some people think that visiting a cemetery might be morbid or creepy, but it’s a really interesting way to learn history — and to connect it with real people. A historian who gives tours of London’s cemeteries said that cemeteries are ‘museums of people,’ which I thought was really lovely.
Melissa: So… I’d like to share some highlights from two historical cemeteries in Europe: one for daytime and one for night. The first cemetery we visited together was Pére Lachaise — on our first trip to Paris together in 2000. Pére Lachaise is laid out like a city on a grid. It was established in 1804 and was the first garden cemetery in the world.
Melissa: The day we visited was a perfect fall day. It was pleasantly cool and a little overcast. The cobblestone paths were covered in gold and orange leaves that crunched under our feet. And there was hardly anyone there. I can still hear our heels clacking on the stones and rustling the leaves. It felt spooky and peaceful at the same time.
Melissa: Pére Lachaise is the final resting place for so many famous people, and we had a map to call on all of them. The singer Édith Piaf, author Marcel Proust, Marcel Marceau the mime, the actresses Olivia de Havilland and Sarah Bernhardt, and Jim Morrison of The Doors.
Melissa: There was a time when ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ was my favorite book, so I was excited to see Oscar Wilde’s tomb. It did not disappoint. His monument is an impressive Art Deco flying sphinx. It’s carved from 20 tons of limestone that was dragged from Derbyshire to the artist’s studio in Chelsea. Wilde once famously wrote, ‘A kiss may ruin a human life,’ and his tomb is covered in red and pink lipstick marks from fans kissing the stone.
Melissa: That day, I also learned the story of Héloïse and Abélard. Do you remember this? It’s a medieval story of ill-fated love. Héloïse was a young noble lady. The much older Abélard was hired to be her teacher. They fell desperately in love and were married in secret. When her uncle discovered their union, the bride was sent to a nunnery — and Abélard became a monk. They lived the rest of their lives apart, but are now interred together in a small Gothic chapel where they lie side by side for eternity. The two lovers often wrote poetic letters to each other. Now it’s tradition for modern romantics to leave letters at their graveside.
Melissa: I have another tale of undying love that might be even sweeter. This one takes place at Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh. Which, by the way, is said to be the most haunted graveyard in the world. Greyfriars was founded in 1562, during the reign of Mary Queen of Scots, and its first inhabitants were thousands of victims of the Black Plague of 1568.
Melissa: Many of the gravestones and monuments in Greyfriars are decorated with dancing skeletons, hourglasses, and wilting flowers. They’re Memento Mori, reminders that no matter what we do in life, death will meet us eventually. Life is fleeting, and we’d best make the most of it while we can.
Melissa: We took a very memorable night walk in Greyfriars Kirkyard. I’d recently read two stories set in Greyfriars — ‘City of Ghosts’ by V. E. Schwab where the main character has a big show-down with an angry ghost in the cemetery — and a melancholy ghost story about true love called ‘Soulmates.’ That one is from the Gothic story collection ‘Haunted Voices.’ I’m predisposed to scaring myself with my overactive imagination, and having just read those books set me up. I was loving the graveyard and feeling that chill up my spine at the same time. As I recall, it was a bit windy that night, so the soundscape was eerie, and shadows were moving across the ground. We were with our friend Tillie, and for some reason, the three of us were whispering, which always makes me feel a little on edge. But also, it would have felt wrong to use our full voices. The Memento Mori that look so fun in the daylight are a little menacing in the dark. And then there’s the mortsafes.
Melissa: Starting in the early 18th century, medical schools needed bodies to teach anatomy, and grave robbers called resurrectionists were their suppliers. Mortsafes were metal cages built atop graves to keep body snatchers from getting into graves. I know that NOW, but then, walking around the graveyard at night, the mortsafes looked like they were trying to keep something from getting OUT of the graves.
Melissa: But! I promised you a love story, and I keep my promises.
Melissa: This story begins in 1850, when a gardener named John Gray arrived in Edinburgh with his wife Jess and son John. When he couldn’t find work as a gardener, he joined the Edinburgh Police Force as a night watchman. I can only assume that the nights were chilly and lonely because he soon got himself a companion: a Skye Terrier he named Bobby. These little dogs look like scamps. They’re low to the ground and have longish hair, with oversized ears that stick up at angles. They look like they’re always ready for adventure.
Melissa: John Gray and Bobby became best friends, plodding along the cobblestone streets, keeping Edinburgh safe.
Melissa: But eight years later, on February 15, 1858, John died of tuberculosis. He was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard, and his dog Bobby refused to leave his side. Through rain, snow, and sunshine, he stayed at the grave. When the city passed a law that all dogs must be licensed, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh himself presented Bobby with a collar and brass tag that read ‘Greyfriars Bobby from the Lord Provost 1867 licensed.’ Bobby presided over his master’s grave for 14 years. The faithful little dog was buried just inside the kirkyard gate, not far from John Gray’s grave. His headstone reads, ‘Greyfriars Bobby – died 14th January 1872 – aged 16 years – Let his loyalty and devotion be a lesson to us all.’ The following year, a life-size statue of Bobby was placed in front of the kirkyard to welcome everyone who comes to pay their respects.
Melissa: That’s the Cemetery 101.
David: I’m about to say three statements. Two of them are true. Mel doesn’t know which is the lie. First statement: In the Victorian era, London had a train line for the dead. Second statement: There’s a 14,000 year old pet cemetery. Third statement: There’s a joyful cemetery in Central Europe.
David: Let’s take them one at a time. In the Victorian era, London had a train line for the dead. That is true!
David: In the mid-1800s, London was getting large. They had 2.5 million people. Of course, many people eventually means many dead people. The graveyards and cemeteries were packed, sometimes five or six feet above the level of the sidewalk. Gravediggers complained to the House of Commons that there wasn’t anywhere to put the newly dead.
David: So, a plan was made to develop a new, huge cemetery on the then outskirts of town. And they did. Big, beautiful place to spend eternity — out in Brookwood. It’s still there — still one of the largest cemeteries in Europe. The only problem was that the new cemetery was 23 miles from London — about 37 km. A horse-drawn funeral cart would take about 12 hours to make that trip.
David: That’s a long time. I hoped we could do the burial and return to London for tea. So, the answer was a train. We’ll put the dead people on a train. And that ooged people out for some reasons you might think, and others you might not. First, people were a bit upset about the idea of sharing a train with a bunch of corpses, even if they were in a different car. But people also had thoughts about mixing dead people of different social classes and religions in the same car on the way to their final resting place.
David: Some people’s bigotry extends into the grave. I am no longer alive, but my intolerance marches on. Mom would have wanted it that way.
David: Anyway. That’s when a train line opened specifically for the dead. And it had a name — a great name. It was called The London Necropolis Railway. It had its own carriages and timetables. There were six different categories of tickets for the living and the dead. Mourners would ride along to the cemetery. Coffins were segregated by religion and congregation. Until the rails were extended into the cemetery, the train would be met at a station by a team of black horses and carriages. After they had extended it, there was a station for Anglicans and one for non-Anglicans in the cemetery.
David: The London Necropolis Rail ran until World War 2. The station was bombed. Service stopped. Motorcars took over after the war. And that was the end of the most fantastic goth transportation service of all time.
David: While we’re on the subject of Victorian deaths, I should also mention that there was, at one time, a store in London called, “The London General Mourning Warehouse.” It sold all types of goods needed for funerals and the elaborate mourning of the Victorian era. I’m picturing Amazon but for Miss Havisham. Dr. Frankenstein needs a new coat. One more cousin, dead from consumption! — what shall I wear? That kind of thing.
David: Second statement: There’s a 14,000-year-old pet cemetery.
David: That’s a lie, but only kind of. We don’t know when we domesticated dogs, but it was a long, long time ago. It is estimated that people have been walking with dogs for the last 30,000 years. That’s before agriculture. That’s before domesticated cows or sheep or goats. The glaciers hadn’t retreated yet. It was a long time ago. Back when I imagine the world was frequently scary and freaky and mysterious, we weren’t alone.
__David:__That number — the 30,000 years — comes from looking at when dogs and wolves started becoming genetically distinct. And — bonus fun fact — the domestication of dogs seems to have happened simultaneously in different parts of the world. People worldwide – in their long-forgotten ancient languages said, ‘Who’s a good boy? That’s right, you are. Wanna go for a walk? Grandmas? To the park? Let’s go!’
__David:__The earliest domesticated dog we’re sure of — is from about 14,000 years ago. In 1914, some miners were cleaning up a mine near Bonn, Germany. They found some bones. They call the local university. Eventually, they unearth a man who’s about 40 and a woman, about 25, and – at the time, 1914, they thought it was a wolf. In the 70s, someone did some science-ing and was like, “This is a freaking dog.” The dog was about 7.5 months old at the time of its death. It would have looked a lot like a young grey wolf. It had clearly been cared for. They had some other things — an arrow, a little sculpture that looks like a moose, something that might have been a hairpin. We don’t know anything about the circumstances of their deaths, or why they were buried together. But the man, the woman, and their pet dog have been there since the last Ice Age.
__David:__So. While we’ve had humans buried with their pets for the last 14,000 years, that wasn’t a pet cemetery. But only presumably because that couple wanted to be buried with their best boy.
David: Last statement: There’s a joyful cemetery in Central Europe.
David: That’s kind of true. There’s a cemetery called The Merry Cemetery.At least in English. It’s in Romania. I don’t know that I would describe the emotional takeaway as merry, but we’ll get to that.
David: The story starts in the 1930s. There’s a woodworker in a village in Romania. I think his name is Stan Ioan Pātras, but I’m probably mangling that. His family has been making tombs and wooden crosses for generations. If you’re a Romanian villager in the area, they’re the family you go to for that. They’ve got a workshop right on the side of the cemetery there. It’s still there.
David: Around 1935, Patras has a thought. The thought is: why so glum? Why do cemeteries have to be weeping angels and skulls and so grey? Why have these empty epitaphs? Rest in peace. Beloved husband. We know he wasn’t. Why can’t we just speak the truth about the people we knew?
David: And this is a small town. Everybody knows everybody. So, he starts carving a different kind of cross. These have an image of the dead person in their life, along with a short poem that tries to capture their voice or something about them. Something true. Patras paints them. The predominant color is a bright blue. But he also uses vibrant accent colors: yellow, red, green, white, and a little black.
David: The crosses all tell different stories about the people buried there. Some are working in a field, or cooking, or leading a classroom. They might have a bit of ‘merry’ to them, particularly with the bright colors. Others show the moment of death: like a guy who ran his car into a tree, or a man being shot by soldiers. Less merry. The primary colors are doing a lot of work there.
David: The poetry though, is a little challenging emotionally. This is a village in Romania. Whimsy might be in short supply. One doctor’s grave starts:
David: There’s another. This one is written for a little girl who was hit by a cab in front of her home. Before I read this, you should know that Si-bi-oo is a city in Romania. Her cross reads:
David: So, this truth-telling catches on. The woodworker Patras made the crosses until he died in 1977. By then he’s carved 700 of them. He passes the work on to another woodcarver, and then another after that. There are now over 1400 bright blue crosses sharing the stories of the people buried there.
David: I feel like the same people who call this cemetery merry are the same people who think ‘Born in the USA’ is a patriotic song. But it’s definitely an attempt to reframe the idea of a cemetery. Patras is, of course, buried in the cemetery he made famous. He wrote his own cross. It reads:
Because I will tell no lie
No matter for whom
David: Stop by the show notes if you want to visit the Merry Cemetery. We’ll tell you how to get there – and if you can’t get there, we’ll show you some video. That’s two truths and a lie.
Melissa: My first recommendation is a classic: The Woman in White, written by Wilkie Collins in 1859. This book is a classic and is considered among the first mystery novels. It’s also one of the first Victorian sensation novels. Do you know this term? It’s a genre that combines suspense, melodrama, and scandalous plot elements like bigamy, potions or poison, disguises, evil aristocracy, fraud, murder, madness, jealousy, love triangles, and general sexiness. One definition I found said sensation novels combine romance and realism in a way that ‘strains both modes to the limit.’ I mean, I’m sold on the concept.
Melissa: This book is a masterclass on how to go over the top in precisely the right way. It includes all of the sensational elements AND cloaks them in a delicious Gothic atmosphere. Plus, it’s very plotty but also has excellent character development.
Melissa: This story begins in the very best Gothic tradition: at midnight, on a desolate road, lit only by moonlight.
Melissa: Humble art teacher Walter Hartwright — get it? Heart Right — walks along a path outside London, lost in thoughts of his travels the next morning. He’s been hired as a drawing teacher for two half-sisters who live at their uncle’s stately country manor called Limmeridge House.
Melissa: As Walter lingers at a crossroads, a young woman dressed entirely in white materializes from the shadows and lightly touches him on the shoulder. She is beautiful and tremulous. ‘Is that the road to London?’ she asks. With those six words, Walter is swept into a perilous mystery that will change his life… forever.
Melissa: Although she appears to him like an apparition, we learn almost immediately that she’s no ghost. She’s a real woman who’s escaped from a nearby asylum. He helps her into a carriage, and they part ways.
Melissa: Soon, Walter’s attention is consumed by his arrival at Limmeridge House and the introduction of his students: Marian is forthright and thoroughly modern. Her half-sister Laura is lovely, ethereal, and dreamy. He becomes fast friends with Marian and falls in love with Laura. But alas, their romance is doomed from the start. Laura is promised to a baronet and fated to spend her days living at HIS manor house, the portentously named Blackwater.
Melissa: Walter’s thoughts return again and again to the woman in white. In true Victorian fashion, several coincidences connect his new acquaintances to the woman in white — and it becomes pretty evident that the baronet has a dangerous secret. Walter becomes determined to unravel these mysteries.
Melissa: This story is a wild ride. It’s got the vibes of a ghost story, but the perils are not supernatural. All the scary bits were everyday elements of the Victorian era. Their lives were lit only by candles or gaslight.
Melissa: If you were in peril, there was no picking up the phone to call for help. The fastest way to communicate was a letter sent by special delivery. But anyone could intercept a message.
Melissa: Proving your identity could be tricky business. The world was still about two decades from photography becoming common, and ID cards weren’t issued until the early 1900s.
Melissa: Women could be locked away in a lunatic asylum by their husbands or fathers for being embarrassing or inconvenient.
Melissa: All of that and more comes into play in this book, including false identities, eavesdropping errors, secret meetings, portentous dreams, a deadly fire, and breathless declarations of love.
Melissa: If you’re not sold yet, here are a few more things you should know:
Melissa: The intricate plot is revealed through the testimony of various witnesses. Each picks up where the previous left off to move the story forward, passing the tale from our heart-right hero Walter, to a kindly lawyer, the stalwart Marian, and more. Even the tombstone in the churchyard delivers a crucial line in the narrative.
Melissa: This story was originally published in weekly installments in Charles Dickens’ magazine ‘All the Year Round’ in 1859. It was such a massive hit, it was published as a complete novel the following year. Edward Bulwer-Lytton, an English writer and politician — and real stick in the mud, said it was ‘great trash.’ But Dickens called the book ‘masterly,’ and Prince Albert loved it so much he gave copies as gifts.
Melissa: This book is excellent on the page, but I recommend the audiobook narrated by English actor Ian Holm. He played Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies. His voice is rich and warm — and he gives each of the narrators a unique sound without putting on fake voices. There are a few spots where Wilkie Collins’ prose can get a little thorny, but Ian Holm’s narration smooths it all over so you can be swept up in the story.
Melissa: If you want to feel righteous indignation at the 19th-century treatment of women while figuratively strolling in a cemetery swirling with mist, this is the book for you. That’s ‘The Woman in White’ by Wilkie Collins.
Melissa: There are many stage, screen, and radio adaptations of this story. I’ll put lots of links in the show notes.
David: My first book is ‘Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them)’ by Sallie Tisdale. Sallie Tisdale is an award-winning author. She’s won the Pushcart prize and an NEA Fellowship. She’s written for the New Yorker and Harper’s. She can absolutely write a sentence, tell a story, and bring along a great quote at the right time.
David: She’s also a nurse. She was a palliative care nurse in Portland for over a decade. This book is a collection of advice for dying people and for people who take care of dying people. This book looks death straight in the face.
David: I’m not going to lie to you. It can get a little heavy. This will not be most people’s pick for reading in a doctor’s waiting room. Although that would be funny.
David: This is a pretty thorough look at death, from months ahead of the event, through the actual death itself, through grief and ceremony, and on to life without. The book feels like you’re going on a trip with a friend who’s been there before.
David: It is mostly practical, but there’s also a lot of recognition of the full emotional spectrum that comes along.
David: She goes through the specifics of what to expect as death nears: what to do before, how to talk with the dying, what are your options for handling the body after death. There’s a death planner in the appendix. You are encouraged to write down everything from whether you want your body to go to science, to who you do and don’t want to see as you’re dying, to what kind of music you’d like to hear.
David: The author has opinions about the process. Tisdale starts with the idea that recognizing death as an inevitable part of life can improve our lives. This has worked for me. When used properly, recognizing death has increased my gratitude for being here now.
David: She talks about how, at least in the US, we make death weird for children. Then that sets us all up for a lifetime of being weird about death. And maybe we should stop that. We should normalize death.
David: One of the strongest threads in this book is about how many of us hold an idea of the good death – the death in bed, at home, with no medical instruments around, surrounded by loving family, listening to Mozart or Beyonce, watching the sun play in the heather through the window. – And how that’s a fantasy that most of us won’t see. For many reasons. Starting with the basics of, “Do you get to choose your death?”… Many people do not, and you never know.
David: At the same time, she recommends setting the intention, knowing what you might want, but knowing that you might not get it. Getting ahead of one’s death, or the death of others who are important to you. Also important is recognizing that other people might have different ideas about how they want to die.
David: The author has a bluntness about her that’s refreshing. She starts the book with the lines, “I have never died, so this entire book is a fool’s advice. Birth and death are the only human acts we cannot practice.”
David: The book is full of advice on how to treat and talk to dying people, but also what not to do or say. Don’t say: I told you to quit smoking. Don’t say: Are you sure that doctor knows what he’s talking about? Don’t say: you meant so much to me. Some seem obvious, but I can understand why it needs to be said; some are less so.
David: A couple of times, she gave a directive I wasn’t sure how to follow. She writes, “Be honest about your own emotional state, without burdening the sick person.” – And I thought, ‘I have trouble being honest about my emotional state without burdening well people. How does that work?’ I need another book. If you have suggestions, drop me a line.
David: A little later, in a chapter on what to do after the death, Tisdale writes, ‘If you are not sure what to do with a dead body, don’t start with a funeral home. Start with the Funeral Consumers Alliance, a national organization with clear, concise information and suggestions intended to help people get what they want at a fair price.’ I feel like if there’s one piece of advice in this book we should all walk away with, it’s that. Start with the Funeral Consumers Alliance, not with the funeral home.
David: There are some funny bits in here with that kind of dark humor you might expect from a palliative care nurse. Tisdale writes:
One of the good physicians with whom I work keeps a cartoon on her office door. The doctor is talking to the patient, gowned and barefoot, sitting on the exam table: “You’ve got six months. But with aggressive treatment, we can help make that seem much longer.
David: Tisdale tells a good story. Or she lets other people tell their stories but she chooses well. They’re illustrative and well-written and powerful. There are a couple of paragraphs in here about the death of Scott Nearing. He was an economist and a pacifist and an educator. Tisdale quotes his wife. In a chapter called ‘Last Weeks,’she writes:
He was bed-ridden and had little strength but spoke with me daily. In the morning of August 24, 1983, two weeks after his 100th birthday, when it seemed he was slipping away, I sat beside him on his bed. We were quiet together; no interruptions, no doctors or hospitals. I said ‘It’s alright, Scott. Go right along.’” And then, “with no quiver or pain or disturbance he said ‘All… right,’ and breathed slower and slower and slower till there was no movement anymore and he was gone out of his body as easily as a leaf drops from the tree in autumn, slowly twisting and falling to the ground.
David: That story messed me up the first time I read it. That man is my dying hero.
David: If you believe that you’re going to die someday, or you know someone else who might, this book will give you some insight into that process and help you on your way. It’s the advice of a palliative care nurse wrapped in the words of an award-winning author. It’s ‘Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them)’ by Sallie Tisdale.
Melissa: My second recommendation is ‘A Fine and Private Place’ by Peter S. Beagle. You might know the author from his book ‘The Last Unicorn.’ That’s considered one of the best fantasy novels of all time.
Melissa: THIS book was published in 1960 and is also beloved. It’s been translated into 10 languages, and every decade or so, a new edition is published. A spiffy new version was just released on October 1.
Melissa: The story is about a man who’s dropped out of society to make his home in an abandoned mausoleum in a vast cemetery. His best friends are a talking raven, two ghosts who fall in love, and an eccentric security guard. So, I read that flap copy and was expecting a whimsical story filled with cemetery hijinks.
Melissa: It was not that. This book is a meditation on life and death — and how we do — or don’t — make peace with how it all turns out.
Melissa: I had a tough time reading this one. Not because I didn’t like it. It’s beautifully written, and the time invested in the characters is worth it. But… for the past, I don’t know… decade or so, thoughts about death hijack my mind at inconvenient moments. I know there’s no light without dark, and awareness of our impending doom makes the good moments even more precious. I believe it’s important to acknowledge that, right? But it’s also impossible to function if I think about that all the time.
Melissa: This book, in the guise of a nice man trying to find peace, forced me to confront the bittersweet, fleeting nature of life over and over — and sometimes it felt like too much. But as I’ve gotten more distance from the reading experience, I do recommend it.
Melissa: So, here we go… The heart of the story is Jonathan Rebeck; everyone calls him Rebeck. He had been a pharmacist, but a series of things went very wrong, and for 20 years, he’s lived in the Yorkchester Cemetery in the Bronx. He’s hiding out, really, alive but not really living.
Melissa: Rebeck can see the ghosts of people who have recently passed. He talks to them and helps them get oriented to their new state of being. Sometimes they play chess together. At some point, the ghosts gently, slowly fade away as they lessen their tethers to the earthly world.
Melissa: Rebeck gets his news of the outside world from a talking raven — who also brings him food stolen from people on the street. The human characters in this book lean toward the thoughtful and the melancholy, but the raven is a rascal. He’s gotten adept at swiping sandwiches and bologna. When Rebeck wishes he had a steak, the raven says, ‘Nineteen years ago you’d have been sloppily thankful for a pretzel. Now you want me to bring you steaks… all the butchers on this last frontier of civilization know me now. I’m going to have to start raiding Washington Heights pretty soon. Another twenty years, if we live that long, I’ll have to ferry it across from Jersey.’
Melissa: One day, a new ghost shows up. His name is Michael. He was a teacher. At his funeral, we see his wife weeping at his grave, and Michael’s first moments as he realizes he’s died. He says:
My body is there… All my chicken dinners and head-scratching and sneezing and fornication and hot baths and sunburns and beer and shaving — all buried and forgotten. All the little pettinesses washed away. I feel clean and light and pure. He thought about book-hunting on Fourth Avenue and decided that he felt like a smashed light bulb. Good-by, he said to his body and walked away down the paved road. He wanted to whistle and felt cheated when he found he could not.
Melissa: That’s not the only thing Michael finds frustrating. He has a hard time letting go of the human world, and eventually, we learn that his death is more complicated than we thought.
Melissa: Soon after, a young girl named Laura arrives. In life, she was a bookseller, and I liked her a lot. She has less reticence about moving on to the spirit world. But then she and Michael fall in love. Their emotions upset Rebeck’s quiet balance, and then a widow starts to visit the cemetery and everything becomes more complicated.
Melissa: This is a very talky book — not much happens, so if you need a plot, this might not be for you. There IS forward momentum — and all the characters end up in a little bit of an action-adventure toward the end.
Melissa: But it’s mostly a found family reckoning with what it means to be alive and how to make the most of the time we have in our different seasons of life. It’s ‘A Fine and Private Place’ by Peter S. Beagle.
Melissa: I should also mention that the title comes from the poem ‘To His Coy Mistress’ by Andrew Marvell. It’s a carpe diem poem from the 1650s that argues love is the way to make the most of the brief time we all have to live. I’ll put a link to the poem in show notes.
David: My next book is ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ by George Saunders. I suspect you’ve heard of this, and maybe even read it. If you haven’t read it, I’m here to gently nudge this into your hands.
David: This is experimental literature! If there’s any single descriptor that might make me second-guess reading a book, it’s the word ‘experimental.’This might find its way onto a shelf with ‘If on a winters night a traveller’ or ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ or ‘Infinite Jest.’ But also, this is more approachable than those, and ultimately, a better experience. I think. Let me tell you why.
David: Let’s start with the author, George Saunders. George Saunders is a good writer. He’s such a good writer that when the people who think about books at the New York Times sat down to write a list of the Best 100 Books of the 21st Century, they had him in there three times. First at 85, for his book ‘Pastoralia,’ a collection of his short stories. Again, at #54 for ‘Tenth of December,’ another collection of short stories. And then at #18 for his first novel, ‘Lincoln in the Bardo.’
David: When you search for George Saunders, the phrase ‘widespread critical acclaim’ comes up a lot. Now. Is he a wild-eyed, respected but not very readable author that you might cover in a lit class but never again?
David: I don’t know your tastes, but I would say no. His imagination and his writing are playful and interesting and fully on display. George Saunders has a story narrated by a person who plays a caveman at a failing amusement park. He’s got a story where there’s a drug that enhances someone’s ability to describe an event. One of his narrators is a fox. Saunders borrows from action, fantasy, sci-fi, a little bit of horror maybe, and humor and uses them all.
David: So, George Saunders is a good author and worth a try. If you’re skeptical, give one of his short stories a go. Now, what’s this book about? What’s this ‘Lincoln in the Bardo?’ What does that even mean?
David: Act I is about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his son, William. Mostly. You meet some other characters. We’ll get to that in a second. William Lincoln died at the age of 11 in 1862, about nine months into the Civil War. So you’ve got this backbone of ‘historical fiction.’ We get stuff that really happened and insights into people who lived and the times they lived in.
David: But, running right next to that, there’s also a strong fantasy story. ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ is historical, but it’s also a ghost story. Many ghost stories. William goes to the graveyard, where he meets other people who are already dead. It is in no way scary. It’s fantastical, sometimes funny, and frequently heartbreaking but there’s no attempt at a jump scare.
David: The ghosts that William meets are fascinating. In part because they’re richly drawn characters. You learn about them as you go through the book. Many of them refuse to recognize that they’re dead. They’re also fascinating because they’re weird manifestations of who they were in life. One of the main characters is described as, having ‘several sets of eyes — all darting to and fro; several noses, all sniffing.’ He has so many hands that you can’t see his body for his eyes, nose, and hands.
David: So it’s historical fiction, it’s fantasy, but it’s also a ‘coming of age’ book. But that age is death. ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ is about letting go of life.
David: The word bardo is a Buddhist idea that means a transitional state. It literally means gap. The most famous bardo is the one between death and rebirth — this age and the next — but ‘bardo’ can also refer to a suspended time in life, maybe a sickness, or a time between jobs. We all had a bardo in 2020, for instance.
David: So, for most of the novel, we’re in the bardo with William, Abraham Lincoln, and the rest of these ghosts. There are two more layers to this book that I want to talk about. One is about how it’s written.
David: Imagine a vast historical library. Now you’ve got a historian in this library. And he’s writing notes by taking his favorite passages, usually short, from somebody else’s book and then cutting and pasting that into his journal. And he’s doing that with dozens of books — copying and pasting one paragraph after another, until he’s got a complete story.
David: That sounds like it might be tedious to read. It’s not. It’s done really well. It’s a pastiche of views and voices and descriptions; sometimes they agree, sometimes not. There’s a chapter where none of the writers agree on what the moon looked like on a particular night, for instance. It’s a fantastic piece of writing. And, it turns out, many of the references are from actual historical documents, but some are created.
David: The last bit that I want to mention about this book is that there’s an audiobook. It’s lavishly produced. It has 166 narrators. A lot of that work is done by Nick Offerman and David Sedaris. The cast is fantastic.
David: I’d say the audiobook is the way to go. I know we all like books, but, in this instance, I found it easier to follow what was happening, and it definitely kept my interest. It’s an excellent fall book, and if you happen to have access to a cemetery… I’m just saying. Plan a walk.
David: I am not nearly the first person to like this book. It won the Booker the year that it came out. Many people put it on their best of the year list: Time, The New York Times, Paste. If you’re curious about it, I recommend giving it a try. It’s ‘Lincoln in the Bardo’ by George Saunders.
Melissa: My final recommendation is ‘Marina’ by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. You might recognize that name. He’s the author of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series.
Melissa: This one is YA. It’s a coming-of-age story and a procedural mystery all wrapped up in Gothic trappings. If this book were a person, it would be a mysterious figure sweeping around corners in a luxurious black velvet cloak with a hood.
Melissa: The story is set in the late 1970s in Barcelona, with tendrils that go back to WWII. It features a chilly boarding school, decaying manor house, burnt-out opulent theater, dank sewers, a possibly haunted greenhouse, a spooky photo album, and — the reason we’re all here — a mist-shrouded cemetery. I should also mention that it rains almost constantly throughout the story and nearly everything of import happens in the shadows.
Melissa: The story opens with a prologue. Our hero Oscar is talking to us as a 30-year-old man. He queues up the story we’re about to read and ends with these words, ‘We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul. This is mine.’
Melissa: With that, we jump back in time to when 15-year-old Oscar was a student at a Barcelona boarding school. The Gothic meter is turned up to 11. The school has a ‘monumental facade’ that’s ‘more reminiscent of a castle than a school.’ It’s buildings are ‘somber.’ The swimming pools are ‘enveloped in a ghostly vapor’. There are ‘eerily silent gyms and gloomy chapels where images of long-fingered angels grinned in the flickering candlelight.’ All of that is just on page 2, so if florid descriptions make you impatient, this might not be the book for you. But I love it.
Melissa: Our Oscar is mostly indifferent to his classes and his fellow students. But he has a dreamy, romantic side. He bides his time each day until the few hours before dinner, when he can escape the school’s gate to explore Barcelona’s winding alleys in the twilight. He’s particularly drawn to a neighborhood with abandoned gardens and crumbling mansions.
Melissa: One day, while looking at a house he describes as ‘rather sinister, even for my taste,’ he hears a beautiful voice singing. He follows the sound through an iron gate, past a moldering fountain, and into the open doors of a sitting room. The song is coming from a gramophone, and next to it sits a gold pocket watch with cracked glass and stopped hands. As Oscar examines the watch, a frightening figure leaps out at him from the gloom. Without thinking, Oscar flees, with the watch still in his hand. That accidental theft is the catalyst for everything that follows, including Oscar’s introduction to a beautiful young girl named Marina and her father, an artist with a broken heart.
Melissa: Marina invites Oscar on a cryptic adventure, leading him to the Sarriá cemetery. On the last Sunday of every month, at exactly 10:00 in the morning, a woman dressed in a black cloak arrives by carriage and places a single red rose on an unmarked grave. On THIS Sunday, the new friends follow the unknown woman. They are soon caught up in a mystery tinged with grand love affairs, betrayal, obsession, and sorrow.
Melissa: Like ‘The Woman in White,’ this is a very plotty book. Scenes of found family and domesticity are broken up with white-knuckle action and moments that made the back of my neck tingle. A key scene in a greenhouse flirts with the border of nightmare territory. It’s deliciously unpleasant. It all feels like the author read Frankenstein, The Island of Doctor Moreau, and The Fault in our Stars, then fell asleep watching Pan’s Labyrinth and had a vivid dream he turned into a novel.
Melissa: But! I also feel like Zafón devised his cliffhanger plot points as tricks to get us to read what he really cares about: stories of cursed characters and their exploits.
Melissa: And he has them say things like this, ‘Do you remember that day when you asked me what was the difference between a doctor and a magician? Well, there is no magic. Our body begins to destroy itself from the moment it is born. We are fragile. We’re creatures of passage. All that is left of us are our actions, the good or the evil we do to our fellow humans.’
Melissa: You know how in mystery stories, you can meet a character who only exists to provide a key piece of information, and then the story moves on without them? In this book, even the side characters have fully rendered histories, and all of them contribute to unraveling the mystery of the woman in the cemetery with the rose.
Melissa: This is melodramatic and melancholy, a big adventure and a sweet story of found family. It will transport you to a pleasingly crumbling version of Barcelona and an unforgettable Gothic cemetery.
Melissa: Carlos Ruiz Zafón said that of all the books he’s written, this is one of his favorites. It’s ‘Marina’ by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.
David: Those are five books we love, set in the cemetery. Visit our show notes at strongsenseofplace.com for links and details. We’ll show you the Merry Cemetery in Romania, and the hair pin of a woman who lived during the Ice Age.
David: Mel, where are we going for our next episode?
Melissa: For our final episode of season 6, we’re indulging in fresh ocean air and the grunge scene in Seattle.
[cheerful music]
Top image courtesy of Mark de Jong/Unsplash.
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