In the Land of Long Fingernails
A Gravedigger's Memoir
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Greystone Books,Canada
Published:8th Sep '11
Currently unavailable, our supplier has not provided us a restock date
Charles Wilkins, then a university student, took a job as a gravedigger in a vast corporate cemetery in the east end of Toronto during the hazy summer of 1969. The bizarre-but-true events of that time-a midsummer gravediggers' strike, the unearthing of a victim of an unsolved murder, and a little illegal bone-shifting-play out among a Barnum-esque parade of mavericks and misfits in this macabre and hilarious memoir. Amid relentless gallows humor and the inevitable reminders of what it is, finally, to be human, Wilkins provides an unforgettable insider's view of a morbidly fascinating industry. In the Land of Long Fingernails is a story of mortality, materialism, friendship and sexuality...and the gradual coming-of-age of an impressionable young man.
* Shortlisted for the Trillium Book Prize * Shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour * Shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Prize "If Raymond Chandler had written a memoir, I could imagine it reading like this..." --Mary Roach, author of Stiff "Reads like a novel... This book feels right; that is, it convinces us unequivocally that this is what working in a cemetery at the end of the swinging sixties must have been like... Just sit back and enjoy the show." --Booklist
ISBN: 9781553658436
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 311g
240 pages