My Father’s Wake
Kevin Toolis Weidenfeld and Nicholson €18.99
Subtitled How The Irish Teach Us To Live, Love And Die, this book concentrates on the latter, or rather the traditional Irish wake which, if never grown truly extinct, is now enjoying something of a comeback. Toolis’s eyewitness account of the death and wake of his father is an uplifting lesson in how the celebration of a wake can bring spiritual consolation and an acceptance of death that can elude us otherwise.