“When we open our hearts to animals, death is the
inevitable price,” writes E.B.
Bartels, a former bookseller at Newtonville
Books, Mass. Good
Grief, her impeccably researched
first book, offers deeply personal stories about the many ways companion
animals enrich lives and how animal lovers must ultimately cope with the pain
of their loss.
Having a pet is a voluntary choice, and mourning pets is
nothing new. Bartels states,
“…67 percent of American households, 84.9 million homes, own ‘some sort of pet’…despite
the inevitable loss that comes with that relationship, the ways people grieve a
dead pet aren’t always taken seriously.” Bartels, a life-long and devout animal
lover, has grappled with this predicament since she was a child. Her father loved
animals, but her mother claimed she was “violently allergic” to “anything with
fur, feathers, or hair.” That left young, animal-loving Bartels to cultivate fresh
water fish in table-top aquariums. When “trouble in (fish) paradise” began and
occupants were found floating in the tank and/or were swallowed up by larger
fish, Bartels became intrigued by the nature of loss and grief. Starting in
kindergarten, she developed something of a “pet aftercare industry,” where she
assisted with animal funerals and burials with peers at school.
This in-depth, richly informative narrative is replete
with down-to-earth stories from Bartels
herself and those of ordinary pet lovers, pet care professionals, celebrities
and historians. The pivotal roles pet birds,
reptiles, rodents, horses, dogs and cats have played in personal lives--and how
they are ultimately grieved and remembered--are interspersed among
fascinating historical facts: The Egyptians treasured the intimacy offered by
pets and exotic animals and were known to bury them alongside humans in the
same sarcophagi. The Summum community, a contemporary religious group in Utah,
mummifies--preserves, in whole--their beloved animal companions. Popular icon, Barbra
Streisand was so devastated by the loss of her beloved 14-year-old dog,
Samantha, that she had her cloned in order to keep “some part of her alive.” Bartels
thoroughly examines these and many other topics including euthanasia,
taxidermy, ideas about reincarnation, pet cemeteries and more.
Readers, like Bartels,
who long to consciously comprehend the pet-human
bond--why people care so much for their pets, in life and in death, and what
makes the bond so worthwhile and why--will be educated, greatly enriched and
find much to reflect upon.
Good
Grief: On Loving Pets, Here and Hereafter by E.B. Bartels
Mariner
Books (Harper Collins Publishers), $27.99 hardcover, 272 pages, 9780358212331
Publication
Date: August 2, 2022
To order
this book on INDIEBOUND link HERE
NOTE: To
read this review as published on Shelf Awareness
for the Book Trade (May 3, 2022 ), link HERE
NOTE: To read a
condensed version of this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's
Edition (July 1, 2022), link HERE
