Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys

Argentinian horror novelist Enriquez (Our Share of Night) makes her nonfiction debut with this evocative travelogue-cum-memoir chronicling the two decades she’s spent visiting cemeteries. Enriquez–whose obsession was sparked after visiting Italy’s “staggering” Staglieno cemetery in her 20s—crosses continents in her search for burial grounds both famous and lesser-known. Among those spotlighted are London’s Highgate Cemetery, the site of Karl Marx’s surprisingly “imposing” grave; Savannah, Ga.’s famously beautiful Bonaventure Cemetery, which she likens to “an ancient but not abandoned temple”; and Australia’s Rottnest Island, which houses an Aborigine burial ground that was used as a campground until the 1990s and is currently marked by “minimal signage, as if they wanted to avoid ruining someone’s vacation.” Enriquez’s reports are peppered with fascinating trivia about each place: the character of nearby cities and towns, histories of architecture and politics, along with weirder anecdotes about corpse relocations and apparitions. Physical descriptions of each space—whether carefully curated or dilapidated, built for the rich or for the indigent—are likewise full of texture and wonder, prompting graceful ruminations on the fluidity of time and memory (Enriquez admits to a “nostalgia for everything, especially for what I’ve never experienced”). The result is an eccentric and enlightening peek into how memorialization happens across the world. Photos. (Sept.)