The undertaking: How death inspired Anne Griffin's latest novel

The author may allow the dead to speak in her new book but first she had to speak to funereal frontline workers to gain an understanding of undertaking 

Author Anne Griffin allows the dead to have a voice in her latest novel 'Listening Still'.

The Tommy Tiernan Show recently featured David and Bríd McGowan, embalmers and funeral directors from Sligo. They spoke eloquently about the spiritualness surrounding their profession — the feeling that sometimes the person who has died is still present in the room, as if they have yet to pass over. In my new novel Listening Still, I take that one step further, and allow the dead to speak.

In a midland’s funeral home, David and Jeanie Masterson carry out the dead’s final wishes, which turn out not always to be simple expressions of eternal love to those left behind. It is a novel that considers truth and lies, and how life’s obligations can sometimes weigh us down.