By Bess Lovejoy
Simon & Schuster, $22.00, 330 pages
Author Bess Lovejoy’s Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses is a delightful little book. It tells a series of anecdotes about the adventures and misadventures famous people have had with death. Lovejoy breaks the book into short chapters with clever titles (for example, “The Body Politic” talks about political figures), and each chapter features six to ten famous figures. The anecdotes themselves are short, most coming in between 3-5 pages, which makes this great reading for those few moments in bed before you fall asleep. Just don’t blame me if you keep telling yourself “just one more.” The narratives, which are sometimes quite graphic, are not at all gory or really disturbing. This book would also be a great choice for a teen or preteen fond of history. The book itself is very attractive with a partial dust jacket, a nicely designed cover and a long narrow format that reminds one of a coffin. It makes a great coffee table book filled with interesting tidbits.
Reviewed by Katie Richards
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