Overview: Death, as the saying goes, is the great leveler, and though many fear it, while others view it as a blessed release, its inescapability affects us all in some way.

The author of this unusual book makes use both of her spiritual reading and of the knowledge she gained from 20-plus years’ experience of taking her Deep Memory Process clients back to deaths in their previous lives, thus giving a broad spectrum of possible post-death scenarios.

Verdict: And thus these very same possible post-death scenarios are illustrated here with a combination of famous and fictional characters, drawn both from accounts that came from the ‘other side’ through her figurative pen and from factual research.

Part of the book’s aim is to dispel all fears of death itself and to demonstrate that the notion of eternal damnation is mistaken. At the same time, it shows the reader that whether a lifetime lasts 10 years (as did Annie Darwin’s) or 97 (like Bertrand Russell’s), it has a clear purpose and value.

The stories’ precise truth is, however, immaterial, as you will find them enjoyable, educational, and reassuring, one and all, as what you will quickly learn early on is that the author Ann Merivale has created an easy to read page turner of the highest, and most insightful order.

In what is ninth, and supposedly final book, she lovingly brings forth all she has learnt being a Deep Memory Process Therapist, inclusive of 27 individual case studies, allowing us to hear their stories whilst at the same time nudging us toward verifying our own perspectives on how we perceive death.

These differing stories of death are fascinating, allowing for our brains to focus in, and listen intently, because there is nothing more personally interesting to us humans as death - and how others handle it so that we might learn from them.

Ergo, DEATH: Friend or Enemy? is one of those reads that at 400 pages you cannot undergo in one seating, although who am I to say it cannot be done, but for me I broke it down into a weeks worth of consumption.

Yes, OK, we live in uncertain death times, with no clear answers, traditions, or histories to lean on. Death is not a teacher of any specific transcendent wisdom, nor of truth, and the existential lessons are not settled in a fixed curriculum. We die, the body is temporal, and grief is a part of life.

Sure, no arguments there, but, and in counterpoint, this is a well researched, enjoyable, and well-documented new book, full of significant insights and thought-provoking tales of near death experiences, mediums, and revealing soul voyages through past lives that will most definitely open your eyes in readiness.

About the Author - Ann Merivale is a Woolger-trained Deep Memory Process therapist. She lives in Worcestershire, UK and, prior to Covid, was working at the Ripon Natural Health Centre in N. Yorks.

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