Sorry for Your Trouble: The Irish Way of Death

(Paperback)

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Description

Inside the intimate rituals of death in Ireland The Irish do death differently. Funeral attendance is a solemn duty - but it can also be a social highlight, requiring sophisticated crowd control, creative parking solutions and a high-end sound system. In Sorry for Your Trouble, Ann Marie Hourihane holds up a mirror to the Irish way of death- the funny bits, the sad bits, and the hard-to-explain bits that tell us so much about who we are. She follows the last weeks of a woman's life in hospice; she witnesses an embalming; she attends inquests; and she goes to funerals, of ordinary and extraordinary people all over the country - including that of her own father during a global pandemic. Shedding fresh, wise and witty light on a key pillar of Irish culture, it is one of the best books ever written about Irish life.

Reviews

Ann Marie Hourihane is the most elegant and insightful chronicler of contemporary Ireland. In Sorry for Your Trouble she explores perhaps the most distinctive aspect of its culture with compassion, erudition, wit and a wonderful precision of feeling and expression. This is, paradoxically, an endlessly vivid reflection, not just on Irish life, but on life itself. Funny, brilliant and deeply moving, it is a lamp to hold up against the dying of the light -- Fintan O'Toole
A beautiful, insightful reflection on a very, very peculiar country's approach to the oddest experience of them all -- Ryan Tubridy
Hugely moving and illuminating. All of life, somehow, is here -- Tanya Sweeney * Irish Independent *
Powerful -- Patrick Freyne * Irish Times *
Moving, comforting and funny, everything a good Irish send-off should be * Business Post *

Author Bio

Ann Marie Hourihane is one of the sharpest, funniest and wisest chroniclers of Irish life. She is the author of the acclaimed She Moves through the Boom. She lives in Dublin.