In 1990, when Andrew Meredith was 14 years-old,
his family fell apart. The downfall was caused by his 50 year-old father, a
teacher fired from La Salle College in Pennsylvania after he was accused of
sexual misconduct with a female student. The scandal and its lasting impact on
the lives of his mother, sister and himself bind this powerfully drawn, often
wrenching debut memoir, The Removers. The
story of Meredith's experiences working alongside his father, who later found
work as a "remover," taking away the bodies of people who died in
their own homes, becomes the central thread and metaphor for the dissolution of
his family.
A remover is someone who is "paid to be
invisible . . . We are men made to be forgotten." Fortunately for the
reader, however, Meredith never forgets incidents from an 18-year period in his
life, which vividly recall details from his often gruesome, sometimes
exhilarating, experiences in handling corpses while grappling with his
bitterness toward a father who broke his heart.
Meredith's fluid, unabashed prose is delivered
in a stream-of-consciousness style interspersed with scenes of how he
floundered for fifteen years after high school. He worked a job he didn't want,
taking ten years to finish college, and endured a series of failed romantic
relationships. After ultimately moving to California, Meredith missed his
hometown—the Frankford neighborhood of Philadelphia. Might his work with the
dead have been his true professional calling, his salvation? Meredith's
circuitous journey of self-discovery, his trying to reconcile his life by
working with the dead, will fascinate those interested in the mysteries of life
and death.
Publication Date: July 15, 2014
Note: This review is a reprint and
is being posted (in a slightly different form) with the permission of Shelf
Awareness. To read this review on Shelf
Awareness: Readers (7/25/14), click HERE