Happy Death Club: Essays on Death, Grief & Bereavement (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781916637238)

Welcome to the Happy Death Club--we have good snacks, great films, and tons of famous members!

Playwright Naomi Westerman was an anthropologist, studying death rituals around the world, when her whole family died. Suddenly, 'end of life' was transformed from an abstract, academic concept into something deeply, painfully personal. She became fascinated by loss and grief, the multiple ways we experience it across cultures, history, and art.

In Happy Death Club, Westerman examines the many faces of death in her own life and in cultures across the world. From expensive coffins and unconventional burials, to horror movies and true crime, what does our treatment of death and dying have to tell us about how we live our lives? What makes a 'good death'? And who owns our bodies before and after we die?

This is a frank, curious and darkly humorous look at one person's journey through grief, and what lies beyond.