All that Remains - A Life in Death by Sue Black
Publisher – Black Swan
Published – Out Now
Price - £8.99
Sue Black confronts death every day. As a professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology, she focuses on mortal remains in her lab, at burial sites, at scenes of violence, murder and criminal dismemberment, and when investigating fatalities due to war, accident or natural disaster. In All That remains she reveals the faces of death she has come to know, using key cases to explore how forensic science has developed, and examining what her life and work has taught her.
Part memoir, part science, part meditation on death, her book is compassionate, surprisingly funny, and it will make you think about death in a new light.
Death in fantasy and science fiction something that happens a lot – sometimes tragically, sometimes for justice and sometimes just to shock a reader. In reality death is something we know we must all face, and it makes understandably many of us uncomfortable – our mortality for ourselves and our loved ones is a fact we cannot escape. But for some death is a profession and a calling – their roles help find the truth and support the victim and their loved ones. Sue Black is now an eminent professor of anatomy and forensic anthropology and in All that Remains she talks about how her career started, the key principles of her science and most importantly how death has been a key part of her life and the impacts it makes for many other people.
For those expecting either a dry science tone or a grisly set of crimes you’ll be disappointed, this is a look back at how Black got involved into this science it is respectful, warm and compassionate. A lot of the early chapters very importantly talk about the human impact of death and Black walks us through her different experience of death as various family members died. Some in darkly amusing circumstances – her favourite funny uncle suddenly fell dead into a bowl of soup; but there are poignant sections on more sombre and tragic long deaths of her parents. Death isn’t a tasty grisly tv show its always about a human being. I really was impressed that this was the first take of the book. A reminder that the body and bones that her profession work with are always a person.
The book then moves into more of the science and application of forensic anthropology. There are missing people that family can finally put at rest, murderers who tried to hide their victims that are found out and even cases where hardly any body was found at all. Black is very good at giving a basic reader like me a nice walk through of the science then show how it can be used – you really are impressed how much you can learn from a few bones. It also underlines the huge amount of learning that goes into this. Black gets to talk about the uses of donating your body into science – one man even asked to see a dissection before he himself would pass away.
Two of the strongest parts of the book are later in Black’s career - her work in Bosnia looking at the site of war crimes. Here the focus on what happened to victims shows both the inhumanity of those who killed so indiscriminately and yet hopefully that there are people happy to both identify and return loved ones to their families as well as amass evidence of what happened. The other section is ow Black was involved with the aftermath of the Boxing Day Tsunami and what this led to in terms of future British disaster groups. All of this is done modestly but you can clearly see that Black is now someone very important in her field and passionate on how it needs to be supported and grown.
I was really pulled into this memoir and loved the humanity of Black’s story and views on death, dying and the sciences behind it. It felt like sitting down with someone and getting their personal take on their profession and at no times felt salacious. If this is an area that in any way interests, you I thoroughly recommend it.
