About the book

Birth is not inevitable. Life certainly isn't. The sole inevitability of existence, the only sure consequence of being alive, is death. In these eloquent and surprising essays, twenty writers face this fact, among them Geoff Dyer, who describes the ghost bikes memorializing those who die in biking accidents; Jonathan Safran Foer, proposing a new way of punctuating dialogue in the face of a family history of heart attacks and decimation by the Holocaust; Mark Doty, whose reflections on the art-porn movie Bijou lead to a meditation on the intersection of sex and death epitomized by the AIDS epidemic; and Joyce Carol Oates, who writes about the loss of her husband and faces her own mortality. Other contributors include Annie Dillard, Diane Ackerman, Peter Straub, and Brenda Hillman.

Praise

“A collection of extraordinary essays ranging from the life cycles of flies to reflections on a ’70s-era porn film, the “romance of old cemeteries,” and “ghost bikes” as memorials to traffic victims. . . . Often poetic and at times funny or gruesome while exposing raw grief, the writers—Mark Doty, Jonathan Safran, Geoff Dyer, Annie Dillard, to name a few—tackle the subject of death with honesty and courage.” —Publishers Weekly

“A remarkably accomplished and buoyantly provocative anthology.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist