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

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