I had second thoughts about starting Making an Exit right before Jenn and JMP arrived – it seemed like maybe not the right book to be reading since Jenn and Teddy had just escorted a friend’s body back to the mainland and attended the funeral. Then again, it seemed like the perfect book to be reading because I had been thinking so much about death and funerals and such.
Turns out, it didn’t matter much since I read less than 25 pages while they were here. Hah.
The book was interesting, lots of different traditions and practices were covered – I really want a cool coffin from Ghana. I mean really…. But there were some things about the book that bugged me, like the author’s constant restating that her atheist father had a change of heart about his “organic matter” (though she doesn’t really know that for sure, she’s making the assumption since he did leave a request to have his ashes spread in the cemetery where his friends were buried.) By the middle of the book, I was saying “Yea yea, change of heart, we know. Sheesh.”)