In the Land of Long Fingernails

June 29, 2009
In the summer of 1969, author and journalist Wilkins (High on the Big Stone Heart) got a summer job as a gravedigger in a Toronto cemetery. His strange-but-true memoir of that summer will fascinate, disturb and most certainly entertain. From a gravedigger's strike to the exhumation of (most of) a corpse, the rogues and oddballs that Wilkins works alongside will both compel and repulse; a perfect example is Wilkins's abrasive, alcoholic, Scottish foreman, whose hostility belies (though sometimes reveals) a touching sense of humanity. Set against a turbulent era, the cemetery seems to exist outside of time, in a realm of intractable taboo, a curious combination of irreverence and sanctity that Wilkins captures effortlessly. With a deft command of both character and language, Wilkins's story could easily double as an out-there novel, but of course it's all the more engaging for its authenticity. Wilkins distills his bizarre day-to-day into a cohesive narrative and a compelling commentary on the times, a perfect trip for those who weren't able to take off work for the Summer of Love .

June 15, 2009
An often funny, yucky examination of how the dead can affect our lives.

For a few months in 1969, Wilkins worked in Toronto digging graves for Willowlawn Everlasting Inc. The experience had a profound effect on the young man. Working in a graveyard with horse manure, religious fanatics and dead bodies while periodically whacked out on marijuana is bound to leave a lasting impression. The book's title—which refers to the fact that fingernails may continue to grow after death—is indicative of the author's jaunty attitude toward the subject. But for Wilkins, death wasn't even the primary aspect of the job; it was more about the oddness of his fellow gravediggers, the questionable business practices of the Willowlawn brain trust and the pervasive sense of greed and cynicism that pervaded the industry."[U]nder the customary Monday morning cloud of laziness, pettiness, halitosis, chaos, and inertia," writes the author,"three of four other lowly employees trudge off with the enthusiasm of ripening stiffs to begin their temporary spiritless bottom-feeding bonehead jobs, their only consolation being that, even in 90 degrees of heat, work in the cemetery is relatively easy and that if they're resourceful they can sleep two or three hours a day under the honeysuckles out by the paupers' graves." Considering that there are only a handful of books that deal with this aspect of death, fans of the macabre should appreciate this oddball memoir. However, because of the repetitive nature of the job, readers not interested in the picayune machinations of the cemetery world might find themselves wishing for a Stephen King novel.

A mostly insightful slice of life and death, but not on the level of Mary Roach's Stiff (2003).

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May 15, 2009
When is a memoir not a memoir? Although this memoir recounts events that took place in the summer of 1969, when Wilkins worked as a gravedigger for a Toronto cemetery, it reads more like a novel, with colorful coworkers, wacky adventures, and an Animal Houselike feeling that there are a few kernels of truth in there, hiding behind the comedy. Wilkins definitely knows how to tell a story, and in the long run, it really doesnt matter how much of the story is real and how much is tweaked for comic effect. Like M*A*S*H, Richard Hookers novel based on his experiences in Korea, this book feels right; that is, it convinces us unequivocally that this is what working in a cemetery at the end of the swinging sixties must have been like. The author is up front about his alterations to names and locale; clearly, he doesnt expect us to treat his book like a rigorous autobiography, and so we wont. Well just sit back and enjoy the show.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)