Our Name is Melancholy – The Complete Books of Azrael

By Stefan Isaksson

Our Name is Melancholy – The Complete Books of Azrael
Leilah Wendell
Westgate Press
413 pages
ISBN: 0944087140

Our Name is Melancholy is a strange book, because it’s more than just a book. In one sense it’s a declaration of love from Leilah Wendell to Azrael, the angel of Death. On the other hand it’s a declaration of love from Azrael to Wendell. It’s also a biography of Wendell’s life and childhood, how and why she founded Westgate and opened the House of Death in New Orleans. Furthermore, it has attributions from Wendell’s husband Daniel Kemp. And, it’s filled with spiritual discussions about the true nature of Death and what happens when our lives on earth finally come to an end.

Does this confuse you? Good, because it really IS confusing. Put shortly, Wendell’s relation with the angel of Death, which she has met both physically and spiritually (whatever that means) is quite unusual. Azrael is her one true love; but in this life in this body she’s married to Daniel Kemp, who she lives with in the House of Death.

Not surprisingly, Wendell isn’t afraid of death – after all, she and it shares something so special that she’s unable to really describe it in words – but still, Our Name is Melancholy is definitely not a pro-suicide book. What Wendell tries to explain is that we don’t really have any real reason to fear death, since it’s not an evil thing in itself. Whether or not one chooses to believe in this is up to the reader, but the message isn’t very much different from other books of the New Age that all talk about how this particular life on earth is but one of many lives).

Hmm… Well, that might be, but the truth is that in case you don’t really care much about the New Age in general and spirituality in particular, then Our Name is Melancholy probably isn’t the right book for you.

However, the declarations of love that appear throughout the book are written in very beautiful English. The words chosen by Wendell, Azrael (through Wendell) and Kemp are all very delicate and exquisite, and most of the time it feels as if one is reading a collection of love poems. The authors are very skilled in what they’re doing, no doubt about that, but is this enough for anyone to invest in the book? Maybe, maybe not. Westgate has published other works that are real collections of poems, and if it’s poems you want, than maybe these books are a better choice (for instance Eros in Exile). But in case you want to learn more about Wendell, Kemp, their view of Death, and the House of Death, then the book can be worth looking up.