Morbid, occasionally unpleasant, and a touch too earnest, but an evenhanded look at the end of life.
The sentimental education of a rural undertaker in all things mortuary.
“I wear many hats—ad hoc grave digger, obituary draftsman, liturgy organizer, headstone designer, community death mentor,” writes Sweeney. Young, pious, sober-minded, he opens on a rather unsettling note: the acts of embalming, sewing, applying makeup, and rendering a corpse to look as if in peaceful repose when, in fact, the death may have been quite grisly. “Half of my chosen profession is unseen,” Sweeney notes. All happens behind closed doors, in this case in a little farm town in northwestern Minnesota, where everyone knows everyone else and where a death goes noticed. Some of Sweeney’s narrative takes the form of a leisurely memoir, its pace befitting the rural setting; some of it reads like notes for a newcomer to the field: Use an “eye cap,” a contact lens–like thing with little burrs, to keep a customer’s eyelids from popping open—disconcerting indeed during a viewing—and keep the corpse’s mouth closed, against the old custom of leaving it open for a “natural, rested look”; if need be, suture the jaws or tie teeth together. Sweeney is candid about what brought him into the funeral business: He had good people skills (to communicate with the living, that is), he wanted meaningful work, and “he wanted a job that scratched the clerical itch, but also provided an income.” Bingo. Sometimes tending toward the preachy but seldom going far over the line, Sweeney writes of his work as a way of helping the web of life during “one final last moment of beauty before the thing held in its center fades from view,” which seems a noble thing indeed. Sweeney’s prose is pedestrian, but his account will satisfy the curiosity of anyone who wonders just what goes on beyond those closed doors.
Morbid, occasionally unpleasant, and a touch too earnest, but an evenhanded look at the end of life.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781668062111
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.
A noted actor turns to verse: “Poems are a Saturday in the middle of the week.”
McConaughey, author of the gracefully written memoir Greenlights, has been writing poems since his teens, closing with one “written in an Australian bathtub” that reads just as a poem by an 18-year-old (Rimbaud excepted) should read: “Ignorant minds of the fortunate man / Blind of the fate shaping every land.” McConaughey is fearless in his commitment to the rhyme, no matter how slight the result (“Oops, took a quick peek at the sky before I got my glasses, / now I can’t see shit, sure hope this passes”). And, sad to say, the slight is what is most on display throughout, punctuated by some odd koanlike aperçus: “Eating all we can / at the all-we-can-eat buffet, / gives us a 3.8 education / and a 4.2 GPA.” “Never give up your right to do the next right thing. This is how we find our way home.” “Memory never forgets. Even though we do.” The prayer portion of the program is deeply felt, but it’s just as sentimental; only when he writes of life-changing events—a court appearance to file a restraining order against a stalker, his decision to quit smoking weed—do we catch a glimpse of the effortlessly fluent, effortlessly charming McConaughey as exemplified by the David Wooderson (“alright, alright, alright”) of Dazed and Confused. The rest is mostly a soufflé in verse. McConaughey’s heart is very clearly in the right place, but on the whole the book suggests an old saw: Don’t give up your day job.
It’s not Shakespeare, not by a long shot. But at least it’s not James Franco.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9781984862105
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.
Another chapter in a long fight against inequality.
Building on his Fighting Oligarchy tour, which this year drew 280,000 people to rallies in red and blue states, Sanders amplifies his enduring campaign for economic fairness. The Vermont senator offers well-timed advice for combating corruption and issues a robust plea for national soul-searching. His argument rests on alarming data on the widening wealth gap’s impact on democracy. Bolstered by a 2010 Supreme Court decision that removed campaign finance limits, “100 billionaire families spent $2.6 billion” on 2024 elections. Sanders focuses on the Trump administration and congressional Republicans, describing their enactment of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” with its $1 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans and big social safety net cuts, as the “largest transfer of wealth” in living memory. But as is his custom, he spreads the blame, dinging Democrats for courting wealthy donors while ignoring the “needs and suffering” of the working class. “Trump filled the political vacuum that the Democrats created,” he writes, a resonant diagnosis. Urging readers not to surrender to despair, Sanders offers numerous legislative proposals. These would empower labor unions, cut the workweek to 32 hours, regulate campaign spending, reduce gerrymandering, and automatically register 18-year-olds to vote. Grassroots supporters can help by running for local office, volunteering with a campaign, and asking educators how to help support public schools. Meanwhile, Sanders asks us “to question the fundamental moral values that underlie” a system that enables “the top 1 percent” to “own more wealth than the bottom 93 percent.” Though his prose sometimes reads like a transcribed speech with built-in applause lines, Sanders’ ideas are specific, clear, and commonsensical. And because it echoes previous statements, his call for collective introspection lands as genuine.
A powerful reiteration of principles—and some fresh ideas—from the longest-serving independent in congressional history.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2025
ISBN: 9798217089161
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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