TLS: review by Dr Emily Wilson

“Campbell's fascinating study of the manifold workers who do lay hands on the dead is eye-opening... A book about corpses might seem like a downer. Worse, the subject risks creating melodrama or glib horror out of grief. But All the Living and the Dead is surprisingly cheerful, even life-affirming. This is partly thanks to Campbell's open-hearted, observant style of writing, which manages to be vivid without sensationalizing the horrors she records.” (Read more)

The Times: review by Helen Rumbelow

“The book's tour de force is the chapter on the technicians who prepare bodies for autopsy at St Thomas's Hospital in London. It is a superlative piece of writing, one of the best essays I have read in a long time: provocative, loving and profound.” (Read more)

Financial Times: review by Mia Levitin

“Campbell weaves judicious reflections on the philosophy and history of the death industry into the reportage... Never macabre... poignant... Transformative.” (Read more)

Publishers Weekly (review):

“A gripping look at professionals who deal with the end of life and their efforts to give people “dignity in death.”…Campbell is a sharp and witty observer who successfully conveys her own fascination with the subject. This is a vivid and open-minded look at a taboo topic.” (Read more)

New Humanist: review by Ralph Jones

“Her similes – describing, for example, a complex tumour as wrapping its way down a person’s spine ‘like the red stripe on a barber’s pole’ – beg to be underlined… All the Living and the Dead triumphs in its mission statement: the reflections from the death workers are very unromantic indeed. Campbell draws conclusions, but these are not clichés.” (Read more)

PODCAST/RADIO

Distraction Pieces Podcast with Scroobius Pip

Robin Ince’s Book Shambles

The American Scholar’s Smarty Pants podcast with Stephanie Bastek

The Virtual Memories Show with Gil Roth

Saturday Extra with Geraldine Doogue

INDEPENDENT VOICES

“There is no good time to talk about death. Nobody wants to hear about death on a nice day, because it would spoil the mood, and nobody wants to talk about death when it is upon us because it’s too close, too insensitive, tonally off.

We wouldn’t want to bring the mood down any lower than it is. Let’s be upbeat. Let’s talk about it later. Let’s think about talking about it one day when death is no longer here. But there has never been a point in history when death wasn’t everywhere. Where living things are, death follows. And sometimes – when we have the privilege – where death goes, so does denial.

When the pandemic began I was in the middle of writing a book about how not only do we not talk about death – despite the fact that we have filled our pop culture with it – but that we have created a whole industry of people who serve as a barrier between us and death in a physical sense. A body does not magically disappear, or transport itself to the grave. There are people who shepherd it from deathbed to cemetery plot, who care for it where we do not go.”

Read more at The Independent.

"Campbell’s book is more than a written narrative, it is a map across uneven and untraveled land. It’s [Campbell's] raw, unguarded honesty that takes her book beyond many others of similar subject. At times humorous and always informative, humanity sets All the Living and the Dead apart." ― The Wall Street Journal

"Campbell describes the mechanics of these jobs in comprehensive detail and with a measured levity that keeps the dour stench of death from overwhelming the pages . . . Her thesis holds true as rising death tolls fade into normalcy and the living forge on with a new numbness: 'Death is everywhere, but it’s veiled, or it’s fiction.'" ―The New York Times

“Readers who share Campbell's healthy obsession will appreciate both her meticulous reporting and her marked compassion.” — Booklist (starred)

“A careful, moving investigation of existential matters told with a keen literary sense and memorable personal insights.” — Kirkus (starred)

“Campbell’s immersion in death is free of trauma . . . startling and affecting, candid, compassionate." ― London Review of Books

“Spent new year devouring this book. Essential reading if you’re a human person in possession of a life. A fascinating, searingly honest and unexpectedly tender look at those who take care of us in death. I badly needed to read this.” — Tuppence Middleton

"Hayley Campbell is one of the Death World's most important voices. Her compassion for the living and the dead stands out amongst the endless authors currently writing about death and dying. All the Living and the Dead is an extremely important book for anyone interested in what happens to a person after they die. I really think everyone should read it in order to appreciate the respect all the invisible workers tasked with handling the dead demonstrate everyday and which the text captures so well. Not only is Hayley Campbell a crucial voice for our times, I would also completely trust her with my parents after they die — which is saying something in my family." — Dr John Troyer, author of Technologies of the Human Corpse

“An intriguing, candid, and frequently poignant book that asks what the business of death can teach all of us in the midst of life. Readers will form a connection with Campbell's voice as intimate as her own relationship with mortality." — Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art

“This is a brave tour through the valley of the shadow. I am happy to welcome Hayley Campbell to the Death community.” — Catharine Arnold, author of Necropolis: London and its Dead

“A proof copy of this book unexpectedly landed in my lap, and I have spent all week chewing it over. A moving, yet never sensationalised account of our relationship with the dead.” — Adelle Stripe, author of Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile