All That Remains: A Life in Death

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The accounts of her parents' deaths can be skipped over completely with no loss, so I wonder why they're given so many pages in the first place.

The one that bothered me particularly is that she says that the surgeon Henry Gray, the author of Gray’s anatomy, was from Aberdeen. It’s equal parts cold and without feeling in its descriptions of death, yet also simultaneously deeply emotive and moving. The book explores aspects of the author's life - part biographic and part recounting of significant cases she has dealt with. Some parts of the book are discussed with relative humour and she has a knack for particularly apt descriptions of body parts and fluids that you might not want to read around dinner time.Black is a Forensic Anthropologist and a professor at Dundee University, and is obviously an expert in her work, and it is clear, that she holds a passion for what she does. Asides from this moment of shared bloodshed between Sue Black and I, I had a great time with this book. And if you don't believe in God, at least be wise enough to look at where such dangerous thinking leads. I happened to listen to the section where author and Professor of Anatomy and Forensic Anthropology, Sue Black, narrates her first time cutting up a cadaver at the same moment as I was slicing up a steak for my very spoilt doggo's dinner. She was the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Engagement at Lancaster University and is past President of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.

She also describes her childhood, her family, and the deaths of beloved family members, her first funerals. She was the lead anthropologist for the British Forensic Team's work in the war crimes investigations in Kosovo, and she was one of the first forensic scientists to travel to Thailand following the Indian Ocean tsunami to provide assistance in identifying the dead. 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.The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. What surprises me, is that she can walk into an area where there are many fatalities, including women and children, who have been through needless suffering, but she is scared shitless of rats. Generally I don't, The Ravenmaster: My Life with the Ravens at the Tower of London being a huge exception. She has seen incredible strength of character from family members, even when the most horrible things have befallen those they love. And don't forget about the smell if you try to hide body parts in your cupboard or beneath your driveway (yes, she's seen this).

Indeed, this unsentimental exploration of “the many faces of death” has at its heart the conviction that we should not fear death but accept it “as an integral and fundamentally necessary part of our life’s process”. But when it comes down to it the book is split into two parts - memoir and philosophy in the first 100 pages, and your standard forensic nonfiction in the rest.It doesn’t creep her out to think of that, no more than it did to meet her future cadaver, a matter-of-fact, curious elderly gentleman named Arthur. She had strong stomach, a practical Scottish clear-headed way about her and an early job working in a butchers, which normalised seeing dead things. It is a form of analytical automation…the real me remains outside of that box somewhere, removed and protected from the sensory bombardment of my work. From the beginning it's clear that Black is not a forensic pathologist, determining causes of death via autopsy, nor an overly science-y person all together. In All That Remains she reveals the many faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and examining what her life and work has taught her.