All That Remains: A Life in Death

Product Information

All That Remains provides a fascinating look at death - its causes, our attitudes toward it, the forensic scientist's way of analyzing it. A unique and thoroughly engaging book. Kathy Reichs, author of TWO NIGHTS and the Temperance Brennan series A model of how to write about the effect of human evil without losing either objectivity or sensitivity ... Heartening and anything but morbid... Leaves you thinking about what kind of human qualities you value, what kinds of people you actually want to be with. Rowan Williams, New Statesman There are a wide variety of cases offered to the reader in the course of this book. I'd rather people discovered the stories for themselves. However I would just say that the Kosovo chapter was far the hardest to read and made me shed a tear. It might well have been the one with most humour in too. Certainly the Indian Ocean Tsunami and the Kosovo chapters show just how determinedly outspoken the author can be although she appears to be listened too increasingly as well. I think a good subtitle for this book would be something along he lines of "How to Read a Dead Body Like a History Book about the Life of That Specific Person." All That Remains is a crime fiction novel by Patricia Cornwell. It is the third book of the Dr. Kay Scarpetta series.

Briefly - fascinating, powerful and very well written. Without question this will be one of my best books of the year. She includes a number of cold cases. Murders that have never been solved. I found this rather unsatisfying. I know her motive was to hopefully shed light on these murders and hopefully bring justice to the murderers and give the victims' families a sense of closure, but they leave the reader hanging, like an unresolved chord at the end of a symphony.

Retailers:

An engrossing memoir . . . an affecting mix of personal and professional' (Erica Wagner , Financial Times)

She begins the book with her medical training in university, what happens in a dissecting lab and how she felt standing before her first body. She also describes her childhood, her family, and the deaths of beloved family members, her first funerals. It took time, but as she became more skillful, her reputation began to grow and she began to be involved in more prestigious and important investigations, such as in gathering evidence of war crimes through forensic examinations of mass graves in war zones. Part memoir, part science, part meditation on death, her book is compassionate, surprisingly funny, and it will make you think about death in a new light. The other aspect of her book that I vehemently disagreed with and, in my opinion, had no place in such a book was her mini-dissertation on why she believes people should be able to decide their own life spans. She uses chilling terms like when someone "no longer has value" "and "doesn't want to be a burden" or really just doesn't want to live anymore. Shouldn't they have the right to decide to end their life legally and safely? Hmmm...legal and safe...where have we heard those terms before? The book has the feel of the author having referred to an exacting diary because it is so well-written, coherent, and put together. It could be mistaken for a first-person literary novel, actually, if it wasn’t labeled as a memoir. Readers who expect a precise in-depth recitation of her work on bodies will be disappointed. She details only the essential science, with edited descriptions of her examinations of bodies. I believe she edits the autopsies because they are of real people with living relatives. Besides, many of us ordinary general readers probably couldn’t handle too much of graphic medical narratives, although she does get into general descriptions of rotting bodies, and of bodies having been torn apart or damaged, and the smells and appearances of a dead body. She mixes quite a lot into her autobiography her feelings and thoughts - perhaps too often and over-the-top, imho. She really wants to put across to readers her concern for the proper respectful handling of the bodies. She never loses sight of the fact that the bodies were people.

Do we expect a book about death to be sad? Macabre? Sue's book is neither. There is tragedy, but there is also humour in stories as gripping as the best crime novel. One might expect [this book] to be a grim read but it absolutely isn't. I found it invigorating!' (Andrew Marr, BBC Radio 4 'Start the Week') Poignant and thoughtprovoking… it is the book’s humanity which will connect with readers. Scottish Daily Mail Reading memoirs by people I have never heard of before is something I very much enjoy. The thought that each and every human being on this planet is leading their own life which is unique and distinct from all others is an unfathomable idea and yet so fascinating. The last two thirds make for a solid, but not outstanding, addition to a shelf about death. Just know that you can gloss over the aforementioned sections and you won't miss a thing.