Book Review: The Secret Life of a Cemetery by Benoit Gallot

I was sent a catalogue of books that I might want to review and one caught my eye immediately.  'The Secret Life of a Cemetery' by Benoit Gallot.  Old cemeteries are often a haven for wildlife but this is not just any cemetery, Benoit Gallot is the head curator of Pere Lachaise the world famous cemetery in Paris.

I have not paid for this book nor have I been paid to write this review.  I chose to review the book and my words and opinions are my own.

The cemetery is enormous, the largest in Paris at around 110 acres.  It is the final resting place for many famous people including Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison and Edith Piaf to name but a fraction.  It is also the final resting for many ordinary people.  It was the first municipal cemetery and the first 'garden' cemetery in Paris; where graves were laid out in a park setting.  In 2018 Benoit Gallot became the head of curator of the cemetery and this book is his reflection on the cemetery, its dwellers dead and living and the millions of visitors it attracts every year.

Benoit tells us that he was previously at Ivry Cemetery, close to Paris, a mere 70 acres, and he confesses that at that point he was seeing trees and wildlife as mainly an administrative issue:  how to keep bird droppings off the gravestones and so on.  In 2011 Paris City Council required a reduction in the use of pesticides.  In 2015 Ivry went pesticide free and slowly the wildlife returned.  Benoit says it was during this period he really began to appreciate the wildlife in the cemetery; that he began to find real joy in it. In 2018 he moved to Pere Lachaise and now had a bigger landscape to manage and observe.  

This is a book full of interesting information - this is everything you never knew you wanted to know about a graveyard.  It is fascinating.  Benoit says there are probably around 1.3 million bodies buried in this cemetery.  He talks us through what it means to be head curator of a cemetery in France, the administration, the things that have to be understood.  He talks of the visitors to family plots and the visitors to famous peoples' graves.  He lives there with his family and talks about what the Coronovirus lockdown was like for them with the cemetery as their back garden to walk around and explore.  

There are the wildflowers and the wildlife that live in and around and visit the cemetery as well.  The photographs, whilst reproduced in black/white on matt paper, are of fabulous quality and give an insight into the joys this element of the cemetery brings.  Benoit has an instagram account @la_vie_au-cimetiere  and it is a beautiful and joyous account to follow.  Lots of foxes and kittens, birds and yes, memorials as well.  

The book is rightly called the 'secret life' of the cemetery.   There is so much to know and learn from this book.  It is a gem of a book and I thoroughly recommend it. 

The Secret Life of a Cemetery by Benoit Gallot is published by Greystone Books.

Take care and be kind.

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