Saturday Snippet: If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr (2009)

In the following passage Bernie Gunther ruminates on the meaning and life and death in his characteristically philosophical way, which is usually tempered by hefty dose of humourous cynicism, but not in this case. My review is here

Later on, I went out to my car and in the shifting dark I thought I saw the figure of the dead gardener, standing beside the well where he’d drowned. Maybe the house was haunted, after all. And if the house wasn’t haunted, I know I was, and probably always would be. Some us die in a day. For some, like me, it takes much longer than that. Years, perhaps. We all die, like Adam, it’s true, only it’s not every man that’s made alive again, like Ernest Hemingway. If the dead rise not then what happens to a man’s spirit? And if they do, with what body shall we live again? I didn’t have the answers. Nobody did. Perhaps, if the dead could rise and be incorruptible and I could be changed for ever in the blinking of an eye, then dying might be worth the trouble of getting killed, or killing myself.