Like all poets, inspired by death, Lynch is, unlike others, also hired to bury the dead or cremate them and to tend to their families in a small Michigan town where he serves as the funeral director. In the conduct of these duties he has kept his eyes open, his ears tuned to the indispensable vernaculars of love and grief. In these twelve essays is the voice of both witness and functionary. Lynch stands between 'the living and the living who have dies' with the same outrage and amazement, straining for the same glimpse we all get of what mortality means to a vital species. So here is homage to parents who have died and to children who shouldn't have. Here are golfers tripping over grave-markers, gourmands and hypochondriacs, lovers and suicides. These are essays of rare elegance and grace, full of fierce compassion and rich in humour and humanity - lessons taught to the living by the dead.

The Undertaking : Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

Literature & Fiction

Lynch, Thomas

United States

Penguin??Books

Thomas Lynch serves his readership as a poet and memoirist, and his townspeople as a funeral director. In this wholly unique collection of essays, the two vocations meet as Lynch shows himself to be a competent functionary of mourning--dispensing comfort and homespun wisdom to the grief-stricken--as well as a poet poignantly tuning language to the right tones of private release. He is also a man of sardonic wit, uncovering humor where we least thought to find it--in our fear of and fascination with death. In its homages to parents who have died and to children who shouldn't have, its tales of golfers tripping over grave markers, portraits of gourmands and hypochondriacs, lovers and suicides, The Undertaking displays an impressively wide vocal range--from solemn, nostalgic, and lyrical to acerbic, sprightly, and unflinchingly professional.

The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

The poems in this volume are all concerned, one way or another, with achieving a balance in the face of gravity. Lynch looks for this equilibrium between equal and opposing forces, such as sex and death, and love and grief - all the things that make us mortal and memorable.

Grimalkin and Other Poems

History & Criticism

Jonathan Cape/Random House

Signed by the author with dedication, A little age toned, but in overall very good condiiton

The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade

W.W.Norton

Bodies in Motion and at Rest

Bodies In Motion and At Rest

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

JONATHAN CAPE.

A Methodist minister gone astray, a trout bum gone fishing with his father's ashes, an artist overwhelmed by embodied beauty - these are among the uncommon heroes and exquisite narratives in this first collection of stories by the American poet and essayist, Thomas Lynch. Set in Michigan's north woods, Ohio's interior, on islands, in casinos and distant cities, these fictions are linked by the gone and not forgotten: former spouses, dead parents, and missing children. In pursuit of love and its redemptions, Lynch's characters are haunted by memory, dogged by desire, made radiant by romance and its denouements. With the elegant prose known to the readers of his earlier work, Lynch masterfully creates a world where mirage and apparition are commonplace, where people searching for safe harbour, reconnection and old comforts find them both near at hand and oddly out of reach.

Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories

Booking Passage

A chronicle of small-town life and death told through the eyes of a poet who is also an undertaker. "Every year I bury a couple hundred of my townspeople." So opens this singular and wise testimony. Like all poets, inspired by death, Thomas Lynch is, unlike others, also hired to bury the dead or to cremate them and to tend to their families in a small Michigan town where he serves as the funeral director. In the conduct of these duties he has kept his eyes open, his ear tuned to the indispensable vernaculars of love and grief. In these twelve pieces his is the voice of both witness and functionary. Here, Lynch, poet to the dying, names the hurts and whispers the condolences and shapes the questions posed by this familiar mystery. So here is homage to parents who have died and to children who shouldn't have. Here are golfers tripping over grave markers, gourmands and hypochondriacs, lovers and suicides. These are the lessons for life our mortality teaches us.

Essays & Correspondence

W.W.Norton&Company

Traces the author's numerous visits to the Ireland community where his grandfather lived one hundred years before, describing his relationships with local farmers, writers, clergypeople, and others and his observations on how the town and its people reflect the larger outside world. 30,000 first prinitng.

Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

Heart-rending stories of life and death: a debut fiction collection by the award-winning author of The Undertaking. A Methodist minister gone astray, a grieving trout bum gone fishing with his father’s remains, an artist overwhelmed by incarnate beauty―these are just a few of the iconic yet utterly unique characters in Thomas Lynch’s spirited collection. Set in Michigan’s north woods, in Ohio’s interior, on islands, in casinos, and in distant cities, these stories are linked by the gone and not forgotten: former spouses, dead parents, and missing children. In pursuit of love and its redemptions, these are pilgrims haunted by memory, dogged by desire, made radiant by romance and its denouements. With the elegant prose of Frederick Busch and the Irish sensibility of William Trevor, Lynch masterfully creates a world where mirage and apparition are commonplace, where people searching for connection and old comforts find them both near at hand and oddly out of reach.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lynch, Thomas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Lynch, Thomas

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Lynch, Thomas. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Undertaking : Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

Grimalkin and Other Poems

The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade

Bodies In Motion and At Rest

Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories

Booking Passage

The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade

Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans

Apparition & Late Fictions: A Novella and Stories