Item category 1: Death Positive Libraries

On 10 June 2020, the scholar James Nwoye Adichie died suddenly in Nigeria. In this tender and powerful essay, expanded from the original 'New Yorker' text, his daughter, a self-confessed daddy's girl, remembers her beloved father. 'Notes on Grief' is at once a tribute to a long life of grace and ...

'Wild Hope' is a powerful collection of wisdom from Donna Ashworth to help us find hope, peace, self-acceptance and inspiration on the days we feel worn down, helpless or sad. Written with love and understanding, Donna reminds us that amidst our daily struggles and constant outpourings of bad new...

Fuelled by a childhood fascination with death, journalist Hayley Campbell searches for answers from the people who choose to make a living by working with the dead. Along the way, Campbell encounters funeral directors, embalmers, a man who dissects cadavers for anatomy students, and a former exec...

Roz Chast brings her signature wit to the topic of aging parents. Spanning the last several years of their lives and told through cartoons, family photos, and documents, and a narrative as rife with laughs as it is with tears, Chast's memoir is both comfort and comic relief for anyone experiencin...

Whether it is pastoral care for the bereaved, discussions about the afterlife, or being called out to perform the last rites, death is part of the Reverend Richard Coles's life and work. But when his partner the Reverend David Coles died, shortly before Christmas in 2019, much about death took Co...

'Grief is for People' is a deeply moving and surprisingly suspenseful portrait of friendship, and a book about loss packed with verve for life. Sloane Crosley is one of our most renowned observers of contemporary behaviour, and now the pathos that has been ever present in her trademark wit is on ...

In this devastating, beautiful and deeply moving memoir of the loss of his son, Rob Delaney explores what life really means, and why it matters. When you're a parent and your child gets hurt or sick, you not only try to help them get better but you also labour under the general belief that you ca...

"In It's OK That You're Not OK, Megan Devine offers a profound new approach to both the experience of grief and the way we try to help others who have endured tragedy. Having experienced grief from both sides—as both a therapist and as a woman who witnessed the accidental drowning of her beloved ...

Subject: When Joan Didion's husband died suddenly of a massive heart attack, a partnership of 40 years ended in a second. Just days before, the couple had seen their only daughter fall seriously ill. Despite the unshakable reality of her husband's death, Joan Didion's thinking was far from down t...