The Embalmer, by Canadian author Anne-Renee Caille, captures a woman reliving her father’s days working as a mortician. This is not a book that you will want to read if you have a sensitive stomach or are terrified by death or true crime.
In The Embalmer, readers are given descriptions of skulls needing to be reconstructed by wax, weighted stones in a soldier’s waterproof casket, and the young drowned boy who had his organs eaten by eels. The book is written in the style of a long poem, and is easy to read in about an hour. The book feels like someone desperately trying to understand both her father and the nature of death. The Embalmer is both fascinating and deeply uncomfortable.
Caille’s The Embalmer is now available from Coach House Books.
