Author: Kate Mayfield
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
If it's the 21st day of December, this this has to be a novel starting with 'U'!
Though the title sounds like one of those pretentious 'literary' works of fiction that medal mills love to lavish their trinkets upon, or perhaps the title of an Audrey Niffeneggar novel, unlike most of my reviews, this isn’t one of a fictional work. You could make a decent argument here that the author is subsuming herself under her father in titling it the way she does: making herself a sub-unit of her father rather than her own person. But the author gets to name their novel, so this is her choice - unless Big publishing™ stepped in and wrenched even those reins from her.
Talking of which, the names have been changed, as they say, in this story, but it is a true story of one woman's upbringing in a funeral home in the sixties and seventies. She was the first person in her family to be carried from the hospital where she had recently been born, directly into a funeral home - where her family lived, and where her life effectively and paradoxically began!
Once the family had moved to a new residence, where her father opened his own funeral parlor on the ground floor of his own home, life became interesting. Her father operated both the funeral home and an ambulance service - not unusual in those days - and they had multiple telephones; they could not afford to disrespectfully miss an important call about someone's dear departed or about someone who needed urgent delivery to the hospital.
It was just as well he didn't ignore the call from a mother-to-be, alone and about to give birth, on a day when the snowy weather was so atrocious that not even the police wouldn't respond! That was the day the undertaker not only made it out there to the house, but learned how to deliver a baby in a hearse, when the child decided it didn't want to wait for the hospital.
There were strict rules in place for conduct in the funeral home. When the funeral was in progress, life upstairs almost went into hibernation: the phones were muted, cooking was carefully monitored to avoid strong smells which might permeate downstairs, movement was reduced to tip-toeing, and conversation trimmed to a whisper, with TV and radio turned off.
The author had a rather strict upbringing, especially by modern standards, and her mother's intransigence and disciplinarian attitude eventually forced her into her spending more and more of her time in her father's funereal domain. It's strange to think of it like that, isn't it: to think that an environment can be so unappealing to you that you'd rather be in a funeral home?!
On that score, humor isn’t absent from this story. There are endless stories to be enjoyed here, and there's a sly (and occasionally not so sly) vein of humor running through them. The tone of the novel is perky and vibrant throughout. Curious asides about "the Egg Man" (long before The Beatles sang it!) and interesting phrases like "enough hairspray to kill a cat" abound making this a really engaging and interesting read.
The humor is matched equally with sadness, not just from the upset of people dying who were known to the family, and young children dying who were known personally to the author. There's also racism and the desegregation that really wasn't. On top of all that, there's a rivalry between her father's funeral services and those of the other guy in town. Note that this was not the guy who took care of black funerals, with whom her father got along famously, if secretly. No, this was rivalry with the guy who had the ear of the hospital's director, and some rich businessmen who had financial interests in burials for one reason or another.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this. This book is very different form my usual fare, and it;s probably because of that that i enjoyed it so. I recommend this book as a good read, a trip through history, and a very personal account of life in the sixties and seventies.
