Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
In the aftermath of his father's untimely death and his family's indecision over what to do with the remains, Thomas Mira y Lopez became obsessed with the type and variety of places where we lay the dead to rest. The result is Monument Valley, a singular collection of essays that weaves history, mythology, journalism, and personal narrative into the author's search for a place to process grief.
Across three continents and ten different resting places, Mira y Lopez explores unusual hallowed grounds. From the world's largest cryonics institute in southern Arizona, to a set of Roman catacombs being digested by modern bacteria, to his family's burial plots in the mountains outside Rio de Janeiro, to an 18th century desert cemetery that was relocated for the building of a modern courthouse, Mira y Lopez examines these overlooked spaces and what they tell us about ourselves and the passing of those we love--how we grieve them, and how we attempt to forget them. Monument Valley's invigorating blend of ideas creates a relief map of our memorials while opening up the liminal spaces created not only when someone dies, but when our memories of them also begin to pass.
Monument Valley is a roving elegy, a highly personal and startling dive into our personal and public underworlds--a meditation on the active and passive nature of memory, our variable states of grief, and our culture's inclination to turn a blind eye to what it cannot process.
Synopsis
"Mira y Lopez's first book is a thoughtful, intriguing collection of 10 personal essays dealing with the dead and where they end up . . . These are wide-ranging and often tender meditations on death." --Kirkus Reviews In the aftermath of his father's untimely death and his family's indecision over what to do with the remains, Thomas Mira y Lopez be-came obsessed with the type and variety of places where we lay the dead to rest. The re-sult is a singu-lar collection of essays that weaves together history, mythology, journalism, and personal narrative into the author's search for a place to process grief.
Mira y Lopez explores unusual hallowed grounds--from the world's larg-est cryonics institute in southern Arizona to a set of Roman catacombs being digested by modern bacteria, to his family's burial plots in the mountains outside Rio de Janeiro to a nineteenth-century desert cemetery that was relocated for the building of a modern court-house. The Book of Resting Places examines these over-looked spaces and what they tell us about our-selves and the passing of those we love--how we grieve them, and how we attempt to forget them.
Synopsis
The Book of Resting Places is Mira y Lopez's account of his travels, from a cemetery to a crematorium to a cryonics company . . . He's looking for the good death, somewhere, anywhere. --The New Yorker
In the aftermath of his father's untimely death and his family's indecision over what to do with the remains, Thomas Mira y Lopez became obsessed with the type and variety of places where we lay the dead to rest. The result is a singular collection of essays that weaves together history, mythology, journalism, and personal narrative into the author's search for a place to process grief.
Mira y Lopez explores unusual hallowed grounds--from the world's largest cryonics institute in southern Arizona to a set of Roman catacombs being digested by modern bacteria, to his family's burial plots in the mountains outside Rio de Janeiro to a nineteenth-century desert cemetery that was relocated for the building of a modern courthouse. The Book of Resting Places examines these overlooked spaces and what they tell us about ourselves and the passing of those we love--how we grieve them, and how we attempt to forget them.