Death is not my friend, neither is it my enemy; it is my destiny.
"Part memoir, part rant against the traditional funeral business, part manifesto, part just musing on death and facing it with compassion and courage. It's lovely and thoughtful and may make you rethink a few things."-The Guardian
"This book is a great work of craft and beauty."-Salena Godden, author of Mrs Death Misses Death
When he became an undertaker, Rupert Callender undertook to deal with the dead for the sake of the living. What Remains? is the brilliant, unforgettable story of the life and work of the world's first punk undertaker-but it is also a book about ordinary, everyday humanity and our capacity to face death with courage and compassion. To say goodbye to the people we love in our own way.
In becoming the world's first "punk undertaker" and establishing the Green Funeral Company in Devon, UK, Ru Callender and his partner Claire challenged the stilted, traditional, structured world of the funeral industry; fusing what he had learned from his own deeply personal experiences with death, with the surprising and profound answers and raw emotion he discovered in rave culture and ritual magick.
From his unresolved grief for his parents and his cultural ancestors to political and religious non-conformists, social outlaws, experimental pioneers, and acid house culture, Ru Callender has taken to an outsider "DIY" ethos to help people navigate grief and death. He has carried coffins across windswept beaches, sat in pubs with caskets on beer-stained tables, helped children fire flaming arrows into their father's funeral pyre, turned modern occult rituals into performance art and, with the band members of KLF, is building the People's Pyramid of bony bricks in Liverpool.
What Remains? is a profound, deeply moving, and politically charged book that will change the way readers think about life, death, and the all-important end-of-life experience.
"Rupert Callender hope[s] to redefine the funeral."-The Telegraph
"Death has shown me unimaginable horror, the unbreakable core of love and courage that lies at the heart of what it means to be human."-Rupert Callender, from What Remains? "Part memoir, part rant against the traditional funeral business, part manifesto, part just musing on death and facing it with compassion and courage. It's lovely and thoughtful and may make you rethink a few things."-The Guardian
"This isn't a grisly book; it is sharp, angry, punchily philosophical and often funny. It basically invents a new type of lifestyle aspiration: deathstyle."-The Times
"Callender's joyous, thought-provoking book is an account of how his own early encounters with bereavement led to him becoming a new kind of undertaker."-Daily Mail
"What Remains? is a profound and vital book that reads less like a memoir and more like a confession. As honest, terrifying and truthful as a mirror at midday, it embraces life and death equally and is too compassionate to flinch. Inspiring and unforgettable."-John Higgs, author of William Blake vs the World
"A fascinating insight into Life's oldest ritual. Dead interesting."-Rónán Hession, author of Leonard and Hungry Paul
"A remarkable book. One of the most important books of our age. It had me laughing and crying by turns, sometimes both at the same time, and each page brought a new revelation, a new insight, a new understanding of what it means to be human in this beautiful world, in this strange moment we are passing through. It's a book destined to join the greats of counterculture nonfiction, like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Cosmic Trigger and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."-CJ Stone, author of Fierce Dancing
"A truly extraordinary book. It is like nothing else I've ever read, or thought I needed. Heartful of the ferocious, transcendent power of love and wonder; it is deeply profound, funny, and wholly and radically m
