The Good Cemetery Guide

THE GOOD CEMETERY GUIDE is set against the background of Anthony Loxton's lonely childhood.

Anthony lives in Kalk Bay, a small seaside town, with his mother, Ma, and fulfils his role as the third-generation funeral director at the Loxton Funeral Parlour. Events unfold on a daily basis, drawing together the living and the dead in unexpected ways. Facing the prospect of a bleak dutiful future, he conducts a secret parallel existence as Tony the Fox, louche guitarist who plays at a local music bar and has brief unsatisfactory liaisons with women who frequent the locale.

When a nubile one-night-stand (Lily) makes a dramatic appearance in a body bag at the funeral parlour his two worlds collide. Anthony breaks the cardinal unspoken rule of the funeral business by getting 'involved' in the last stage of Lily's life, knowing that nothing can ever be the same again.

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"Once upon a time there lived a man who was born the son of a mortician. In this small matter of the choice of a suitable father no choice was given to him. This at least is true of every man. No man chooses his father."

-- THE GOOD CEMETERY GUIDE