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These Silent Mansions: A Life in Graveyards
'A refreshingly original meditation on a huge but widely ignored the relationship between the living and the dead... I wish I had written it myself.' Literary Review Graveyards are places of escape, of peace and reflection. Each is a garden or nature reserve, but also a site of commemoration, where the past is close enough to a liminal place, at the border of the living world. Jean Sprackland’s prize-winning book, Strands , brought to life the histories of objects found on a beach. These Silent Mansions is also an uncovering of individual vivid, touching and intimately told. Sprackland travels back through her own life, revisiting graveyards in the ordinary towns and cities she has called home, seeking out others who lived, died and are remembered or forgotten there. With her poet’s eye, she makes chance discoveries among the stones and a notorious smuggler tucked up in a sleepy churchyard; ancient coins unearthed on a secret burial ground; a slow-worm basking in the sun. These Silent Mansions is an elegant, exhilarating meditation on the relationship between the living and the dead, the nature of time and loss, and how – in this restless, accelerated world – we can connect the here with the elsewhere, the present with the past.
256 pages, Paperback
Published May 4, 2021
12 people are currently reading
292 people want to read
About the author
Jean Sprackland
22 books22 followersJean Sprackland is a poet and writer. She is the winner of the Costa Poetry Award in 2008, and the Portico Prize for Non-Fiction in 2012. Her books have also been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the TS Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Award.
Jean is Reader in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.
She is a trustee of the Poetry Archive, the world’s premier online collection of recordings of poets reading their work.
Jean has worked as a consultant and project manager for organisations involved with literature and education. She has held residencies in schools and universities, and is a tutor for the Arvon Foundation.
She lives in London.
Jean is Reader in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.
She is a trustee of the Poetry Archive, the world’s premier online collection of recordings of poets reading their work.
Jean has worked as a consultant and project manager for organisations involved with literature and education. She has held residencies in schools and universities, and is a tutor for the Arvon Foundation.
She lives in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
March 24, 2020
Near where I grew up, is a place called Brookwood Cemetery. For years this 500-acre site was the largest burial ground in the world and when it was first set aside it even had its own railway line and platform at Waterloo Station. I spent many an afternoon walking around there, and whilst some might find that morbid, there was a peacefulness to the place.
Sprackland is another person who fascinated by graveyards, so much so that she remembers the places that she has lived and significant family moments by the graveyards that were nearby. She has fond memories of these places and uses them to root her in the locality. Going back over people’s past make her want to travel back through her life, to the towns and cities that she has lived before. In each of the graveyards, she finds a glimpse of a life that has long ceased to exist but still has a story to tell of the people who once walked the streets that she now walks again.
Her journey will take her from Oxford to Devon, London to Norfolk. But also back into the past to learn about a drowned lad, the owner of a steam fairground, bodies used for medical research and a young lady who died after her clothes caught fire.
Wherever I have lived, I have found them – some like cities, others like gardens, or forests of stone – and they have become the counterparts of those lived places: the otherworlds which have helped make sense of this world.
Each of these stories is told with Sprackland’s keen eye for detail in the lives that were once lived and their final resting place as she traces the inscriptions in the stone. Death is still a taboo object, however, there is something peaceful about graveyards, not only are they are a haven of quiet in a relentless world, but they are one of those thin places where you feel closer to other worlds. It is beautifully written as I have come to expect with all of her books, she has immensely powerful prose. Even though it is about the dead, it not morbid at all, rather she is curious about the past and the relics that we leave to remember someone.
Sprackland is another person who fascinated by graveyards, so much so that she remembers the places that she has lived and significant family moments by the graveyards that were nearby. She has fond memories of these places and uses them to root her in the locality. Going back over people’s past make her want to travel back through her life, to the towns and cities that she has lived before. In each of the graveyards, she finds a glimpse of a life that has long ceased to exist but still has a story to tell of the people who once walked the streets that she now walks again.
Her journey will take her from Oxford to Devon, London to Norfolk. But also back into the past to learn about a drowned lad, the owner of a steam fairground, bodies used for medical research and a young lady who died after her clothes caught fire.
Wherever I have lived, I have found them – some like cities, others like gardens, or forests of stone – and they have become the counterparts of those lived places: the otherworlds which have helped make sense of this world.
Each of these stories is told with Sprackland’s keen eye for detail in the lives that were once lived and their final resting place as she traces the inscriptions in the stone. Death is still a taboo object, however, there is something peaceful about graveyards, not only are they are a haven of quiet in a relentless world, but they are one of those thin places where you feel closer to other worlds. It is beautifully written as I have come to expect with all of her books, she has immensely powerful prose. Even though it is about the dead, it not morbid at all, rather she is curious about the past and the relics that we leave to remember someone.
February 9, 2020
I’m a big fan of Sprackland’s beachcombing memoir, Strands, and have also read some of her poetry. Familiarity with her previous work plus a love of graveyards induced me to request a copy of her new book. In it she returns to the towns and cities she has known, wanders through their graveyards, and researches and imagines her way into the stories of the dead. For instance, she finds the secret burial place of persecuted Catholics in Lancashire, learns about a wrecked slave ship in a Devon cove, and laments two dead children whose bodies were sold for dissections in 1890s Oxford. She also remarks on the shifts in her own life, including the fact that she now attends more funerals than weddings, and the displacement involved in cremation – there is no site she can visit to commune with her late mother.
I most enjoyed the book’s general observations: granite is the most prized headstone material, most graves go unvisited after 15 years, and a third of Britons believe in angels despite the country’s overall decline in religious belief. I also liked Sprackland’s list of graveyard charms she has seen. While I applaud any book that aims to get people thinking and talking about death, I got rather lost in the historical particulars of this one.
Favorite lines:
“This is the paradox at the heart of our human efforts to remember and memorialise: the wish to last forever, and the knowledge that we are doomed to fail.”
“Life, under such a conscious effort of remembering, sometimes resembles a series of clumsy jump-cuts rather than one continuous narrative.”
I most enjoyed the book’s general observations: granite is the most prized headstone material, most graves go unvisited after 15 years, and a third of Britons believe in angels despite the country’s overall decline in religious belief. I also liked Sprackland’s list of graveyard charms she has seen. While I applaud any book that aims to get people thinking and talking about death, I got rather lost in the historical particulars of this one.
Favorite lines:
“This is the paradox at the heart of our human efforts to remember and memorialise: the wish to last forever, and the knowledge that we are doomed to fail.”
“Life, under such a conscious effort of remembering, sometimes resembles a series of clumsy jump-cuts rather than one continuous narrative.”
June 17, 2020
I love walking through graveyards, and have been lucky enough to do so all over the world. Although creepy to some, for me, it is a very peaceful environment. Whilst living in central Glasgow, I would regularly walk up to the Necropolis, where enormous and grand mausoleums wound their way up the hill, and more modern graves filled the slopes.
Graveyards all over the United Kingdom are the focus of poet and non-fiction author Jean Sprackland's These Silent Mansions: A Life in Graveyards. Her memoir of sorts has been split into eight different sections; these include loose musings on topics like 'The Graveyard in Spring', 'The Graveyard at Dawn', and 'The Drowned Graveyard'.
In her prologue, Sprackland comments: 'I can remember my life by the graveyards I have known... Wherever I have lived, I have found them - some like cities, others like gardens, or forests of stone - and they have become the counterparts of those lived places: the otherworlds which have helped make sense of this world.' She goes on to write about her decision to 'revisit all my old hometowns, to make a journey into the physical fabric of my own past.'
In beautiful prose, Sprackland takes us around the country. The first stop on each trip is the graveyard, the place where she believes 'the stories are kept'. Her descriptions are gorgeously poetic; of a grave in Stoke Newington, for instance, she writes: 'A breeze ripples the roof of the tomb with shadow. The lower branches of a holly tree languish exhaustedly over its surface, like the thin arms of a girl over her books.'
For Sprackland, too, graveyards are a place filled with peace: 'Sorrow is present, but age and weather have tempered it.' She writes at length about her infatuations with individuals buried in the various graveyards which she visits - Elizabeth Pickett, for instance, who died in 1781 'in consequence of her Cloaths taking Fire the preceding Evening', and a smuggler and 'sometime leader of a notorious gang' in Devon, quite wonderfully named Hanibal Richards. Alongside these individual stories, she seamlessly integrates a wider sense of place, and discusses the avoidance of, and discomfort felt toward, the notion of death in many modern day societies. She also writes about the history of each graveyard which she visits.
Sprackland writes with such insight. She informs her reader: 'I am accustomed to thinking of the graveyard as a kind of archive, a source of information which is not available elsewhere.' She is also honest about the little she knows regarding her own family: 'What does it mean, anyway, to belong somewhere?... No place owns me, and I like staying free, staying lost. But I don't know where the bones of my ancestors lie, and I have never seen a monument bearing my family name.'
These Silent Mansions is both absorbing and moving, and infused with such beauty. Sprackland's journey, around both her past and the pasts of so many who lie beneath the ground, is a quiet and absorbing one. The author writes so tenderly about the natural decay of both gravestones, and the bodies which lie beneath them: 'Words blur and lose their definition, or the stone recedes and the leading stands proud on its pegs like long teeth before loosening and falling out.' These Silent Mansions is utterly transporting, and so thoughtful.
Graveyards all over the United Kingdom are the focus of poet and non-fiction author Jean Sprackland's These Silent Mansions: A Life in Graveyards. Her memoir of sorts has been split into eight different sections; these include loose musings on topics like 'The Graveyard in Spring', 'The Graveyard at Dawn', and 'The Drowned Graveyard'.
In her prologue, Sprackland comments: 'I can remember my life by the graveyards I have known... Wherever I have lived, I have found them - some like cities, others like gardens, or forests of stone - and they have become the counterparts of those lived places: the otherworlds which have helped make sense of this world.' She goes on to write about her decision to 'revisit all my old hometowns, to make a journey into the physical fabric of my own past.'
In beautiful prose, Sprackland takes us around the country. The first stop on each trip is the graveyard, the place where she believes 'the stories are kept'. Her descriptions are gorgeously poetic; of a grave in Stoke Newington, for instance, she writes: 'A breeze ripples the roof of the tomb with shadow. The lower branches of a holly tree languish exhaustedly over its surface, like the thin arms of a girl over her books.'
For Sprackland, too, graveyards are a place filled with peace: 'Sorrow is present, but age and weather have tempered it.' She writes at length about her infatuations with individuals buried in the various graveyards which she visits - Elizabeth Pickett, for instance, who died in 1781 'in consequence of her Cloaths taking Fire the preceding Evening', and a smuggler and 'sometime leader of a notorious gang' in Devon, quite wonderfully named Hanibal Richards. Alongside these individual stories, she seamlessly integrates a wider sense of place, and discusses the avoidance of, and discomfort felt toward, the notion of death in many modern day societies. She also writes about the history of each graveyard which she visits.
Sprackland writes with such insight. She informs her reader: 'I am accustomed to thinking of the graveyard as a kind of archive, a source of information which is not available elsewhere.' She is also honest about the little she knows regarding her own family: 'What does it mean, anyway, to belong somewhere?... No place owns me, and I like staying free, staying lost. But I don't know where the bones of my ancestors lie, and I have never seen a monument bearing my family name.'
These Silent Mansions is both absorbing and moving, and infused with such beauty. Sprackland's journey, around both her past and the pasts of so many who lie beneath the ground, is a quiet and absorbing one. The author writes so tenderly about the natural decay of both gravestones, and the bodies which lie beneath them: 'Words blur and lose their definition, or the stone recedes and the leading stands proud on its pegs like long teeth before loosening and falling out.' These Silent Mansions is utterly transporting, and so thoughtful.
August 22, 2020
Many readers would be perplexed by this volume and wonder about its point. It isn't a gazetteer of graveyards, has no glossy photographs or humorous epitaphs. But for those who haunt graveyards, loving everything they find there - the biodiverse nature reserve, the gentle, mildly melancholy confrontation with mortality, the fragments of sculpture and architecture, and above all, the hints of human stories, this is a book so essential one wonders why it's never been written before. Jean Sprackland writes beautifully and each short essay-chapter is in part a memoir of her own life. But at the centre is the largely forgotten human history, like that of Agnes Gibb, a Victorian child who died before her second birthday and is buried in an unmarked grave. Agnes was 16" high and so small she was exhibited as the Fairy Queen, a fairground attraction (when she died there were others jostling for the crown. No shortage of pathologically undersized children.) My favourite chapter is on the Harkirk in Lancashire, a 17th century recusant burial place on private land. That those dead Catholics should lie in peace in holy ground was so offensive to the state authorities they sent in men to smash it up with the result only three gravestones were left. Two centuries later, a tiny memorial chapel was built there - and the lost names were retrieved from a burial register and recorded on the wall.
Wonderful.
Wonderful.
April 3, 2023
An excellent book concentrating on the historical secrets of graveyards and their occupants.
Jean Sprackland walks us through the graveyards of her life, in places where she has lived, loved and studied. She presents nuggets of knowledge about the random inhabitants of graves, from drowning victims to pillars of the community to those buried in mass paupers graves.
I, like Sprackland, love walking around my local graveyard. I find it very peaceful, soothing and meditational, so I found this book the same. Much enjoyed.
Jean Sprackland walks us through the graveyards of her life, in places where she has lived, loved and studied. She presents nuggets of knowledge about the random inhabitants of graves, from drowning victims to pillars of the community to those buried in mass paupers graves.
I, like Sprackland, love walking around my local graveyard. I find it very peaceful, soothing and meditational, so I found this book the same. Much enjoyed.
Read
June 25, 2025An interesting blend of the historical, past, present and future, feels like the book takes a full circle touching briefly on their origins and potential future. Through thematical chapters Sprackland examines the unique environment and natural aspects of graveyards. Also through individual histories examines the shifting of attitudes toward burial, and the inclusion of the accidental explosion at Fauld, makes this an absorbing read. Poems and photography included, looking forward to her new book.
March 29, 2023
Written with poetic brilliance, this is such a beautiful book, made to feel magical and almost fictional by the storytelling. Historical nonfiction at its finest. A must-read for writer inspiration.
April 23, 2020
This was a beautifully written and fascinating insight into the world of the graveyards. From the broken tombstones, to the wildlife inhabiting the grounds late at night, I found myself totally absorbed in the journey of the author as she revisits graveyards near to where she has lived and the memories it brought back for her, alongside the history she uncovers about 'residents' and the stories and times they lived through.
I've always been fascinated by graveyards and find myself drawn to them wherever I go, and the same goes for Jean Sprackland so as she looks back over her life she decides to go on a little adventure to revisit old houses she has lived in. It gives a lovely insight into her life and as she has a wonderful way with words, it was just a pleasure to read! I found comfort in her prose, as I find comfort and peace in graveyards.
There's plenty about the wildlife and nature that is often found at these sites,the changes to the churches and the areas they are in but what was most fascinating was the names that caught her eye on some tombstones, and as she delved further into their history it was their stories coming to life that were so illuminating and made them 'real'! They weren't just names to be forgotten and covered over by moss and lychen.
She also looks at how different generations dealt with death, along with the perceptions and way funerals are held, with the prominence of cremations and now the surge in natural funerals being more eco-friendly. I learnt so much throughout this book as she has such an accessible manner and each chapter was well crafted and a delight to read.
I've always been fascinated by graveyards and find myself drawn to them wherever I go, and the same goes for Jean Sprackland so as she looks back over her life she decides to go on a little adventure to revisit old houses she has lived in. It gives a lovely insight into her life and as she has a wonderful way with words, it was just a pleasure to read! I found comfort in her prose, as I find comfort and peace in graveyards.
There's plenty about the wildlife and nature that is often found at these sites,the changes to the churches and the areas they are in but what was most fascinating was the names that caught her eye on some tombstones, and as she delved further into their history it was their stories coming to life that were so illuminating and made them 'real'! They weren't just names to be forgotten and covered over by moss and lychen.
She also looks at how different generations dealt with death, along with the perceptions and way funerals are held, with the prominence of cremations and now the surge in natural funerals being more eco-friendly. I learnt so much throughout this book as she has such an accessible manner and each chapter was well crafted and a delight to read.
March 30, 2021
'Sorrow is present, but age and weather have tempered it. A graveyard is softened by ivy and elder, blurred by rain or soot, dismantled gradually by the passing years, always in a state of becoming.'
.
In These Silent Mansions, Jean Sprackland revisits graveyards she has lived near, walked through and spent time in. From stones with memorable engravings to local histories and her own memories, this essay collection is full of poetic reflections on what makes these spaces both restful and compelling.
.
In These Silent Mansions, Jean Sprackland revisits graveyards she has lived near, walked through and spent time in. From stones with memorable engravings to local histories and her own memories, this essay collection is full of poetic reflections on what makes these spaces both restful and compelling.
Read
January 13, 2022The last time I read a poet's prose book about graveyards, I found the experience unsatisfactory. But that one approached an individual cemetery with a weirdly specific request, then got annoyed when said request unsurprisingly went unfulfilled. Whereas Jean Sprackland, though occasionally disappointed by things like not finding an inscription she'd been assured was in a particular place, generally gives the impression of approaching these borderland spaces with a much more open and receptive frame of mind. The book forms a sort of structured reverie, each usually tripartite chapter inspired by a visit to a graveyard she has known across her life. Visited in reverse order, too, which makes for a nice counterpoint, going back to her beginning even as she makes her way through the places where we all end up. Along the way we are introduced to a selection of the barely readable and the blanked by time, while always being consoled by the signs of life among the death, whether that be lichen, brambles, foxes raising their young, or the many activities live humans get up to in the midst of their dead. And the writing is lovely, as wise and melancholy as the old stones:
"Even the motif of the hourglass, however skilfully carved in stone, will be rubbed out by the years. The mason knows this, and operates in partnership with these processes. Together they construct a model demonstrating how time works."
"The graveyard at dusk. See how the clamour of things is countered always by the wish to disappear. Not to cease existence, but to let go of the strain of being distinct: the this and this of it, the tyranny of attention. Dusk understands, does what it can. Everything is rinsed by shadow; yew and stone slip off the old integrities."
"Even the motif of the hourglass, however skilfully carved in stone, will be rubbed out by the years. The mason knows this, and operates in partnership with these processes. Together they construct a model demonstrating how time works."
"The graveyard at dusk. See how the clamour of things is countered always by the wish to disappear. Not to cease existence, but to let go of the strain of being distinct: the this and this of it, the tyranny of attention. Dusk understands, does what it can. Everything is rinsed by shadow; yew and stone slip off the old integrities."
September 12, 2021
This was a book that grew on me as I read it. The author has a fondness for graveyards and, I can understand why, as I often find them quiet havens full of wildlife.
She revisits the graveyards in the various towns and cities she has lived in. In most of them there is a particular gravestone and story behind the death that she is interested in finding out more about. For example, the grave of the fairground owner killed in Norwich, or the drowning of a young boy in Tutbury -going so far as to find and interview the friend he was with at the time, who is now over 90.
In between these there are other, shorter chapters about various facets of graveyards, such as an interest in lichens - which I think almost everyone must have if they ever spend any time looking at headstones, or why angels are so often seen in Victorian graveyards, but not so much in more modern settings.
Altogether an interesting read about a topic most people wouldn't write about.
She revisits the graveyards in the various towns and cities she has lived in. In most of them there is a particular gravestone and story behind the death that she is interested in finding out more about. For example, the grave of the fairground owner killed in Norwich, or the drowning of a young boy in Tutbury -going so far as to find and interview the friend he was with at the time, who is now over 90.
In between these there are other, shorter chapters about various facets of graveyards, such as an interest in lichens - which I think almost everyone must have if they ever spend any time looking at headstones, or why angels are so often seen in Victorian graveyards, but not so much in more modern settings.
Altogether an interesting read about a topic most people wouldn't write about.
October 21, 2022
Such a lovely, meditative read; I probably read it two or three times, regularly going over pages again, immersing myself in the evocative writing. Poignant - and delightful.
August 23, 2023
Conflicted hmmm. Some of the graveyard stories really gripped me and were so beautifully written. Others bored the hell outta me. Life and death is about balance.
September 18, 2022
A beautifully written ode to the graveyard. Full of rich local history and the stories of ordinary people. An elegant contemplation on the spaces we bury our dead and the ways in which ritual and ceremony have evolved.
June 11, 2020
I saw this go by on a psychogeographic list and thought it looked interesting.
This is a super book. It may help if you start by having graveyards as a hobby (so, yes), but I think even if not you cannot help being sucked in by this combination of real stories and most beautiful observation and language. Sprackland is a poet of some reputation so she's pretty good with words and this shines through.
A sequence of chapters has a her revisiting "ordinary places" where she was brought up and lived, and re-exaiming them through the filter of the local dead. Just about everywhere has some interesting story just down the road, and the selection she presents are riveting: no spoilers. And then there are many reflections on life and death, and attitudes thereto over the centuries, that make this a fascinating read.
Unputdownable.
This is a super book. It may help if you start by having graveyards as a hobby (so, yes), but I think even if not you cannot help being sucked in by this combination of real stories and most beautiful observation and language. Sprackland is a poet of some reputation so she's pretty good with words and this shines through.
A sequence of chapters has a her revisiting "ordinary places" where she was brought up and lived, and re-exaiming them through the filter of the local dead. Just about everywhere has some interesting story just down the road, and the selection she presents are riveting: no spoilers. And then there are many reflections on life and death, and attitudes thereto over the centuries, that make this a fascinating read.
Unputdownable.
March 10, 2022
An unexpected gem. I didn’t think I would get much from a book about graveyards and, ultimately, death but this one was more than that. It was an exploration of what it means to be human within our understanding of life and death. How we lose so much but can regain it in how we remember and honour our dead. I loved how she travelled through her life in graveyards and wove in stories from the dead and the living. The writing was constructed in such a gorgeous way, there were so many lines that left a gentle emptiness in my stomach. There was so much remembrance and connection shown for a subject that I find we avoid, and I found it calming, freeing and grounding to feel hopeful around life, death and graveyards.
I feel like this is a book I’ll want to come back to.
I feel like this is a book I’ll want to come back to.
December 28, 2024
Such a unique topic, beautifully articulated.
April 24, 2020
Like Jean Sprackland, I have also long been fascinated by graveyards. Particularly those crumbling, half forgotten ones found hidden away in the heart of towns and cities.
A sanctuary of peace, a place for reflection, a meeting place for the living and the dead and a safe haven for nature.
The first graveyard I can remember, forming part of my earliest chldhood memories, is indeed the nearest to where the author now lives. It is not surprising, that Edgar Allen Poe spent some of his formative years nearby.
Here, poet and writer Sprackland looks back on her life and the places she has stayed, revisiting the nearby graveyards.
Chance discoveries and fascinating stories are retold. Tales involving smugglers, drownings, explosions, ancient coins and secret burials are recounted.
Alongside this she examines the various forms of nature that can be found here. The more neglectful the upkeep, the more it flourishes.
This lyrically written work meditates on the relationship between the living and the dead, the past and the present.
It was one of those books, that once I picked up I could not put down and is perhaps perfect for finding a graveyard bench and losing oneself in its pages on a warm sunny day.
A sanctuary of peace, a place for reflection, a meeting place for the living and the dead and a safe haven for nature.
The first graveyard I can remember, forming part of my earliest chldhood memories, is indeed the nearest to where the author now lives. It is not surprising, that Edgar Allen Poe spent some of his formative years nearby.
Here, poet and writer Sprackland looks back on her life and the places she has stayed, revisiting the nearby graveyards.
Chance discoveries and fascinating stories are retold. Tales involving smugglers, drownings, explosions, ancient coins and secret burials are recounted.
Alongside this she examines the various forms of nature that can be found here. The more neglectful the upkeep, the more it flourishes.
This lyrically written work meditates on the relationship between the living and the dead, the past and the present.
It was one of those books, that once I picked up I could not put down and is perhaps perfect for finding a graveyard bench and losing oneself in its pages on a warm sunny day.
July 10, 2020
As a person for whom the cemeteries were always intriguing places to visit I was automatically drawn to this book. I enjoy getting to know the stories of people whose life is now represented only by a mostly undecipherable stone tomb, walking in the atmosphere full of nostalgia. And that is exactly how reading this book felt like - a slow walk, through for most people unimportant, details of these silent places.
I was quite impressed by the variety of topics covered in this book. The author focuses on things ranging from individual stories of people to the biological importance of certain plants that are common in graveyards. I can only imagine how difficult, yet interesting must have been to gather all the information for such a niche topic.
The book is written semi-poetically, full of atmospheric language that adds a bit of emotion to the text. The philosophical background of the author is also easy to spot.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in cemeteries (for whatever reason) as it will open your eyes to a new perception that you will only realize the next time you will visit one.
I was quite impressed by the variety of topics covered in this book. The author focuses on things ranging from individual stories of people to the biological importance of certain plants that are common in graveyards. I can only imagine how difficult, yet interesting must have been to gather all the information for such a niche topic.
The book is written semi-poetically, full of atmospheric language that adds a bit of emotion to the text. The philosophical background of the author is also easy to spot.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in cemeteries (for whatever reason) as it will open your eyes to a new perception that you will only realize the next time you will visit one.
September 14, 2025
This is one of the rare times that my expectation of a book was wrong, but thankfully so. Instead of being a more distanced or academic look at cemeteries, it ended up being a beautiful blend of cemetery, urban and personal history. This is one of the warmest books I've ever read, even though it deals with subjects like death, the passage of time and, every now and then, egregious history.
The way Sprackland weaved in subtle moments of philosophy so smoothly into her writing was simply gorgeous. A lot of the chapter endings had me sitting there for a few seconds thinking about the gentle profoundness of what she just stated and what the section encompassed in its entirety. I don't think anything I say will do her writing justice, but know if you need something genuinely comforting but engaging, this is a good pick. Especially if you're someone who feels drawn to graveyards and historical introspection. Will definitely be checking out further work by her.
The way Sprackland weaved in subtle moments of philosophy so smoothly into her writing was simply gorgeous. A lot of the chapter endings had me sitting there for a few seconds thinking about the gentle profoundness of what she just stated and what the section encompassed in its entirety. I don't think anything I say will do her writing justice, but know if you need something genuinely comforting but engaging, this is a good pick. Especially if you're someone who feels drawn to graveyards and historical introspection. Will definitely be checking out further work by her.
February 3, 2025
4.5 stars
This was the sort of book that articulates opinions you didn't know you already had.
It was not one thing. It is part history, part nature book, part memoir, all loosely orbiting around a location I have visited as a child and adult, on different continents and in different moods and circumstances. I wrote down many quotes, and really enjoyed the multiple instances where she wrote something down that I have experienced and never a) known others experience b) thought to write down.
This was the sort of book that articulates opinions you didn't know you already had.
It was not one thing. It is part history, part nature book, part memoir, all loosely orbiting around a location I have visited as a child and adult, on different continents and in different moods and circumstances. I wrote down many quotes, and really enjoyed the multiple instances where she wrote something down that I have experienced and never a) known others experience b) thought to write down.
April 29, 2020
This is exactly the kind of book I like. The author is thoughtful and interesting and I enjoy looking at and experiencing the world through her eyes. I am slightly obsessed by graveyards anyway and she tapped into all the things that make me love them, the names, the histories, the peace of them and their place in the wider social structure around us. I enjoyed the choices of tales she told. Everything about this was wonderful.
March 3, 2021
There was a little bit of nice prose in here but it was not enough to carry the meandering flow of the book. I would have preferred something more structured. The non-chronological approach to the author's life was confusing and made the ending profoundly anticlimactic. The historical anecdotes were fine, but the author's reflections on them rarely amounted to more than "Hm. Really makes you think." It's a quiet book but that is not necessarily praise since I suspect that very little of it will stick with me.
March 22, 2021
As someone who finds graveyards calming places I was intrigued by a book written by someone who feels the same.
Jean Sprackland travels back to all the places she has lived and uses a graveyard or burial ground to explore the history associated with the memorials or none that are left.
I learned a thing or two about my local area and found her tales of pauper burials, shipwrecks and strange demises so interesting.
Jean Sprackland travels back to all the places she has lived and uses a graveyard or burial ground to explore the history associated with the memorials or none that are left.
I learned a thing or two about my local area and found her tales of pauper burials, shipwrecks and strange demises so interesting.
September 14, 2020
I loved this book. A series of gentle shorts on lives past and particular sites, or stories of interest to the author. Some whimsical humour, superb nature writing, and profound thoughts on the human condition. It didn't surprise me to find this author is also a poet. I'll be looking for her book on beaches next.
May 18, 2020
It's a fascinating and enthralling book, full of story and well written.
I liked the style of writing and I think that the author is a good storyteller.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
I liked the style of writing and I think that the author is a good storyteller.
Recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.
August 28, 2024
Very beautifully and thoughtfully written reflections. The specifics and precise metaphors make it work I also love the structure of some of the longer pieces interweaving ideas and experiences. The structure reminds me of film and she does refer to this at one point.
September 21, 2020
A compelling blend of autobiography and the study of burial grounds of all kinds.
October 23, 2022
This is a lovely book
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