Eve Joseph

A meditation on death and dying--including religious, mythological, anthropological, and some (just a few) medical musings about the endings of our human lives--Joseph's book put me in mind of poet Diane Ackerman's discursive nonfiction. The book has some of the strengths and (to my mind) suffers from some of the same (occasionally annoying) poetic excesses as Ackerman's. At times, the writing felt too pretty and precious to be genuine--drawing attention to itself rather than illuminating the subject. The title, however, really hits the mark: dying IS an act of intimate strangeness, and there ARE sections of the book in which Joseph--who has long worked in palliative care--does indeed convey this. Recommended with some reservations.… (meer)