Tales from Kentucky Funeral Homes

by William Lynwood Montell

In Tales from Kentucky Funeral Homes , William Lynwood Montell has collected stories and reminiscences from funeral home directors and embalmers across the state. These accounts provide a record of the business of death as it has been practiced in Kentucky over the past fifty years. The collection ranges from tales of old-time burial practices, to stories about funeral customs unique to the African American community, to tales of premonitions, mistakes, and even humorous occurrences. Other stories involve such unusual aspects of the business as snake-handling funerals, mistaken identities, and in-home embalming. Taken together, these firsthand narratives preserve an important aspect of Kentucky social life not likely to be collected elsewhere. Most of these funeral home stories involve the recent history of Kentucky funeral practices, but some descriptive accounts go back to the era when funeral directors used horse-drawn wagons to reach secluded areas. These accounts, including stories about fainting relatives, long-winded preachers, and pallbearers falling into graves, provide significant insights into the pivotal role morticians have played in local life and culture over the years.

Genres: Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2009

Reviews

[Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was an interesting book with many interesting stories, told in vignettes of real people as they spoke, but a little editing would have been nice. Some of the people interviewed repeated themselves a lot, which could have been tightened with nothing lost to the stories.
Some of the stories were rich in history and real eye-openers. At the other end of the scale, some were a waste of time. But I would say the better outweighed the worse. I recommend it.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the stories but they all seemed to basically repeat themselves most of the time. Bought this book thinking it was about what people in funeral homes do but was surprised it was all stories that had almost nothing to do with what I thought it was about.

[Baby Muffin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Repetitive

The book was decent at first but the stories where practically repeating themselves. There wasn’t any good substance to it at all.

[571czoar Church · Rating 5 out of 5]

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[Tara Lawson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really interesting. Montell did a great job in writing in a way that held true to the oral tradition of his research, and a fantastic job organizing it. He also intentionally chose to interview people with a lot of job experience and interesting stories, which was a really smart move. The only drawback was that some of the stories did feel a bit repetitive, but that also served to highlight how some of the work experiences were common in the field. This book not only showed what it is like to work in a funeral home, but it also reflected a lot of KY culture-- particularly rural KY. I highly recommend this book.

[MKF · Rating 2 out of 5]

I agree with the other reviewer that this was repetitive and boring. It has some interesting stories but many especially in the first chapter was pretty much the same. Even the funeral directors included were the same in every chapter. They must not have a lot of funeral directors in Kentucky or they knew this would be a bad book to appear in.

[Cat · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was so boring and so repetitive. I felt like it needed better editing- all of the undertakers had similar stories, and it got tedious to read the same basic information again and again. There were a few humorous or interesting anecdotes, but they were the exception.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting! Being raised in a funeral home, I could relate and / or understand a lot of the stories described here.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting to a point. A lot of repetition.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I work in a library. I have odd tastes in reading. This was quite sweet and a quick read.