Embalmer pens first book
As an embalmer, Kim Tarrant found great privilege in looking after people following their death.
A career she describes as ‘‘fascinating and exhausting’’, it was also rewarding, and now the firsttime novelist hopes her book may even demystify the science of preserving a dead body to protect it from decay.
Life and Death In Birkenhead was released late last month, and is described as a thriller.
However, Tarrant said it was difficult to pin it down to one theme, as the book also blended her two other interests – crime and figuring out what makes people tick.
‘‘It would be nice if people read the book and say: oh is that what happens? she said.
‘‘It is very much a privilege to do what we do. It’s a lovely caring job and feels really special.
‘‘Death is always a time.’’
Her book, set in the small suburb of Birkenhead, Auckland, follows Maisie Manson, who has to return from her OE when a tragic event back home shatters her world.
Tarrant said the book had been several years in the making tough with Covid-19 and her father becoming ill slowing down progress. He died before she finished the book but Tarrant said it was fitting the book had been dedicated to him as, like her, he was an avid reader.
‘‘We always used to joke that we never bought a book for Dad for Christmas, or his birthday, as he’d start reading it straight away, and you wouldn’t see him for the rest of the day.
‘‘We had that connection – a love of reading.’’
A love of reading, and writing, had always been part of who she was but Tarrant said she never imagined she would write a book.
‘‘As a little girl I would write stories for my sisters and I used to make up stories for my kids.’’
Tarrant and her family left Temuka in 2004, to live in Lower Hutt, before moving to the North Shore of Auckland.
While looking for work, Tarrant was inspired during a phone call with close friend, and former Lower Hutt neighbour, the late Hellen Whatman.
‘‘Her brother-in-law was a funeral director and knew a funeral home that needed someone.’’
While visiting the home, Tarrant said she was asked if she would like to see the mortuary. ‘‘It fascinated me. ‘‘There was an embalmer there, and I walked in and started asking them questions.’’
A week later, Tarrant began training as an embalmer.
It was to be a job she found rewarding, and a privilege, she said.
‘‘You want them [the family of the deceased] to have the best memory of their loved one.
‘‘They are trusting you to look after that person they have loved their whole life.’’
The crime and mystery in the book also tied in with Tarrant’s obsession with the genres, she said.
‘‘I used to stay up half the night reading and watching crime [stories].
‘‘I love how the police work things out – the forensic side of it.’’
She also felt she was good at reading people, and was naturally ‘‘very observant and nosey’’, she said.
‘‘Human beings are just fascinating.’’
She encouraged anyone who wanted to write a book to ‘‘start writing and keep writing’’. ‘‘Just write it down.
‘‘The ideas don’t have to be fully formed. I’ve kept a lot of notes and everything I’ve written down over the years.’’
Life and Death in Birkenhead is available at all good bookstores.