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I'm really happy that I ended up reading the second book in this series even though I was kind of feeling meh about the first book. The author builds on the main characters and setting, so we get to learn a lot about the past of the stationery shop as well as the shop owner and his friend.

I think that there are a lot of people who would read this and think that the shop owner is a bit too sincere and honest, and I'm not necessarily here to disagree with that, but I think it really matches the body of the books and him being something else and would kind of make the whole thing not work. So I will say that his backstory did feel a bit forced.

Either way, it seems that I am now a convert and I'm going to have to buy the next book in the series at some point sooner rather than later. An English edition for this volume is also coming out later this year, so English reader should have something nice to look forward to!

I'm not really sure what about listening to a book focused on death and full of descriptions of dead bodies and decomposition and whatnot was calming, but it somehow was. I think in my case it helped that I listen to the book narrated by the author, so I could have all of her personality while I was experiencing everything, but I'm still impressed by how compelling this book was.

And I'm even prouder that I only gagged and had to pause so that I didn't throw up a few times! Descriptions about embalming are disgusting.

Anyway this was a great book that had a lot of nice tidbits of information from various cultures and regions across the world, along with a pretty critical view of how people deal with death in North America these days. I think the author's on to something with her thesis of the book--which I believe for any readers of my review to discover by reading the book!

I think this is the first book that I've read about an indigenous elder before and I'm so glad that it won Canada Reads this year, or I would have never read it at all or even known it existed.

The title alone does a great job of summarizing what this book is trying to do and I think it really does that. The narrative is told chronologically from the childhood of the author's grandmother until present (at the time of publication). The sections are broken down carefully and an easy to understand ways and there's also a very informative acknowledgment and afterward at the end from the scholar who helped the author write the book.

That being said, this book has a content warning list that is pretty extensive. The descriptions aren't incredibly graphic, but Ma-Nee dealt with domestic violence, sexual assault, alcoholism, drug abuse, homophobia, etc etc etc. there's also more than one mention of child death. If any of those things or the combination of them is going to be too much for you, I think you should probably sit this one out or do it in very small chunks--very doable because of the easy to understand structure of the narrative.

While I wish that the author hadn't had to go through any of these terrible things throughout her life, I am in awe of the extent of her resilience and the efforts she put into herself. It gives me so much joy that she found love and happiness more than once and seems to live a very fulfilling life. That being said, her experiences are a reminder that while everything takes hard work, hard work alone often isn't enough. We need the support of our community and the people who care about us.

Thanks for the lessons, Elder.