《星期日泰晤士报》畅销书2022年3月（爱尔兰）
很快，封锁就要开始了。人们会独自死去，没有任何适当的仪式。夏洛特的死将被冲走，这是倾盆大雨中的第一滴。当时没人知道，但她的葬礼将是今年最后一次。
那是2020年2月，Ed O’Loughlin听说他认识的一位名叫夏洛特的女子在她年轻时就去世了。他意识到自己正被引导以一种新的、更冷淡的眼光重新评估自己的生活、家庭以及作为一名外国记者和著名小说家的职业生涯。
他突然面临着他一直忽视的事实，他正在变老，他已经不再是过去的样子，他的想象力总是过于活跃，在某个时候改变了方向，从梦想变成了遗憾。他看到他在哀悼自己的过去，而不是夏洛特。
对意义的探索成为奥拉夫林禁闭年的主题。他记得他的哥哥西蒙，30岁时自杀；与他一起报道非洲、中东、巴尔干战争的记者和摄影师，这些战争很难解释，也从未真正停止过；他经常丢下包袱，这是他匆匆过去、不去想事情的借口。
感人、有趣、极其诚实的《今年最后一个美好的葬礼》带领读者从现在到过去，再回到现在，进行一个循环的旅程：“任何真实的故事会以任何其他方式结束吗？”
The Last Good Funeral of the Year: A Memoir
A Sunday Times Bestseller March 2022 (Ireland)
Soon, the lockdown would start. People would die alone, without any proper ceremony. Charlotte’s death would be washed away, the first drop in a downpour. Nobody knew it then but hers would be the last good funeral of the year.
It was February 2020, when Ed O’Loughlin heard that Charlotte, a woman he’d known had died, young and before her time. He realised that he was being led to reappraise his life, his family and his career as a foreign correspondent and acclaimed novelist in a new, colder light.
He was suddenly faced with facts that he had been ignoring, that he was getting old, that he wasn’t what he used to be, that his imagination, always over-active, had at some point reversed its direction, switching production from dreams to regrets. He saw he was mourning his former self, not Charlotte.
The search for meaning becomes the driving theme of O’Loughlin’s year of confinement. He remembers his brother Simon, a suicide at thirty; the journalists and photographers with whom he covered wars in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, wars that are hard to explain and never really stopped; his habit of shedding baggage, an excuse for hurrying past and not dwelling on things.
Moving, funny, and searingly honest, The Last Good Funeral of the Year takes the reader on a circular journey from present to past and back to the present: ‘Could any true story end any other way?’
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