Past Mortems cover art

Past Mortems

Life and death behind mortuary doors

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Past Mortems

By: Carla Valentine
Narrated by: Imogen Church
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About this listen

A day in the life of Carla Valentine - curator, pathology technician and 'death professional' - is not your average day. She spent 10 years training and working as an Anatomical Pathology Technologist: where the mortuary slab was her desk and that day's corpses her task list.

Past Mortems tells Carla's stories of those years and investigates the body alongside our attitudes towards death - shedding light on what the living can learn from the dead and the toll the work can take on the living souls who carry it out. Fascinating and insightful, Past Mortems reveals the truth about what happens when the mortuary doors swing shut or the lid of the coffin closes.

2018, Gold Dagger For Non-Fiction, Long-listed

©2017 Carla Valentine (P)2017 Little Brown
Physics Women

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was good till the chapter about māori

really disappointed to hear such a crass accent and misunderstanding (and pronunciation) of mokomokai and an outdated and colonial view of the practice. the shitty accent and use of an old piece of pākehā writing instead of talking to a māori scholar snacks of laziness the whole chapter just put me off. other than that I was really enjoying it. shame .

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