All That Remains: A Life in Death

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An engrossing memoir ... an affecting mix of the personal and professional. Erica Wagner, Financial Times

Walid Khalidi was born in Jerusalem, he was educated at the University of London and Oxford University. He taught at Oxford, the American University of Beirut, and Harvard. Khalidi is a cofounder of the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS, Beirut), of which he was general secretary until recently. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a cofounder of the Royal Scientific Society, Amman. He currently serves as President of the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPSUS, Washington, DC). Maybe death is not the demon we fear. She does not need to be lured, brutal, or rude. She can be silent, peaceful, and merciful. Perhaps the answer is that we don't trust her, because we don't choose to get to know her. To take the trouble in the course of our lives to understand her.." You are knowledgeable in terms of writing a novel, I really enjoyed it! Well done! ... If you have some great stories like this one, you can publish it on Novel Star, just submit your story to [email protected] or [email protected] Read more For a professor of anatomy and forensic anatomy I had expected more. The best book I've ever read on anatomy and death (and philosophy, in the form of thoughful essays) is by F. González-Crussí. His The Day of the Dead: And Other Mortal Reflections is so stupendous, and so brilliantly written I was never able to come up with a review that would accurately reflect my impressions of it.

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The last two thirds make for a solid, but not outstanding, addition to a shelf about death. Just know that you can gloss over the aforementioned sections and you won't miss a thing. I truly loved all the different parts of the telling of her stories, her opining, what she knows, what she doesn’t know, frustrations, joys, and her passion for the work, her deeply felt calling for it and satisfaction at the opportunities and obligations it has provided her. I like the way she thinks, love her humor and am amazed at her tolerance for incredibly trying situations. Unpleasantness I would run from. Horrors that would slay my every ability to respond at all, and she breathes deeply and reaches for her gloves. I could no more think of this kind of work than I could read it straight through. There were times I had to stop and do something else. The book has the feel of the author having referred to an exacting diary because it is so well-written, coherent, and put together. It could be mistaken for a first-person literary novel, actually, if it wasn’t labeled as a memoir. Compelling, brave and extremely accessible.. A must for anyone who thinks about the basics of living and dying. And there are jokes as well. Rachel Joyce A beautifully written memoir full of reflections on the deaths of strangers and family members. Oliver Thring, Sunday Times

The other aspect of her book that I vehemently disagreed with and, in my opinion, had no place in such a book was her mini-dissertation on why she believes people should be able to decide their own life spans. She uses chilling terms like when someone "no longer has value" "and "doesn't want to be a burden" or really just doesn't want to live anymore. Shouldn't they have the right to decide to end their life legally and safely? Hmmm...legal and safe...where have we heard those terms before?

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And what if you want to live, but other people decide you have no value, that you're a "useless feeder" as Hitler termed it. What if your family can't afford the financial burden of caring for you? What if the government decides they can't fit your care into the budget? This is already the case with socialized medicine. Thousands of Canadians can attest to the fact that they are receiving treatment in the U.S. because they didn't qualify for treatment in their own country. Reading memoirs by people I have never heard of before is something I very much enjoy. The thought that each and every human being on this planet is leading their own life which is unique and distinct from all others is an unfathomable idea and yet so fascinating.

A killer is stalking young couples, and the remains of 8 youngsters have been found dead over a couple of years. [1]

Ideal reading if you're a cheerful soul who likes to think about death. And think how it'll brighten your conversation on holiday. The Times If you want to read a compassionate, beautifully written and honest book about death and what it takes to confront it on a daily basis, looked at from all its angles, fearlessly and without leaving any details out, in my view this book is a perfect start. An engrossing memoir . . . an affecting mix of personal and professional' (Erica Wagner , Financial Times)

She is an excellent writer, too. If she ever decides to write a literary novel, she won’t need much assistance from an editor or ghost writer! Interestingly, a lot of American and British mystery writers know her or of her, and some of them call her for advice in writing their fictional books of murderous antagonists. Could not finish. I honestly can’t discourage reading any of her work enough. Even basic facts are wrong, and written with such conviction that I can’t believe anything else. The one that bothered me particularly is that she says that the surgeon Henry Gray, the author of Gray’s anatomy, was from Aberdeen. He is from/worked in London. There’s another surgeon named Henry Gray, from Aberdeen, who was also well-known, though mainly for his wound excision during the First World War, some 50 years after the other one died.

I suppose I was less taken with the small sections near the beginning of the book that seemed to be more like a familial memoir or history rather than delivering facts and experiences. Although there was always a reason for them, such as a device to further expand the readers understanding of various biological processes etc., I just wasn’t that taken with them in comparison to the later chapters. Do we expect a book about death to be sad? Macabre? Sue's book is neither. There is tragedy, but there is also humour in stories as gripping as the best crime novel. Part memoir, part science, part meditation on death, her book is compassionate, surprisingly funny, and it will make you think about death in a new light.