Here’s a strange question: have you ever visited a graveyard for pleasure? Mariana Enriquez has – she’s done so all over the world. From Genoa to Buenos Aires, from mass graves in Western Australia to the artfully arranged bones of the Paris catacombs, she has ventured into the halls of the dead and emerged with countless stories. Some of those stories are written on the gravestones – fascinating lives commemorated with grand monuments. Other stories are harder to find, tragedies of colonialism or political violence hidden beneath the surface. Others still are the stories Enriquez has brought with her, bands she has followed to the ends of the earth or fond memories of old friends. Each of these stories says something about death; each is endlessly fascinating. 

I’ve made no secret of my excitement for this book – even becoming an avid cemetery tourist myself in anticipation – and I’m glad to report that it more than lived up to my expectations. Enriquez effortlessly combines personal memoir, travel writing and history with a healthy dose of gothic atmosphere, and by approaching each place she visits with the same eye for the macabre that animates her fiction, she inevitably captures what makes cemeteries such powerful places. They are often peaceful, usually beautiful, and always a little creepy – with no shortage of hauntings in this book. Above all, though, they are human places that lay bare the one thing we are all guaranteed to experience. It is this persistent confrontation with mortality, together with Mariana Enriquez’s magnetic personality, that allows this book to range so widely across tone and geography without ever feeling scattered. Yet Enriquez never seems anxious to convince you of this profundity – instead she lets each graveyard speak for itself, sharing the experiences that touched her and quietly inviting you to seek out your own among the dead.