Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory
Ratings164
Average rating4.2
This book is the revelation! I have learned so much about the death industry, different cultures rituals, and about the human body after death. Caitlin has a good attitude towards death (which is refreshing!) And even has a youtube called ‘Ask a mortician'. This is a great read, there is nothing put in just for shock value or to purposefully gross you out, everything is important to what she means to say. this book will really get you started into thinking about your own mortality and how we should be changing our death culture in America.
Summary: Caitlin Doughty has worked close to death in various capacities for years, and, in this memoir, the relates her experiences and reflections upon working with the dead and the living who tend to them. She shares a behind-the-scenes look at the current practices of death work in America and offers her thoughts on the ways that those practices—mostly focused on distancing the average person from the realities of death—are socially and emotionally damaging. She leaves readers with some ideas about how we might engage with death in healthier ways as a society.
A blunt and oddly touching view behind the scenes of the funeral industry in the United States, as well as the relationship this society has with death, or rather, tries very hard not to have.
I had read the other book and so was delighted in hearing her reading of this book as she had excellent delivery.
I really appreciate her aim of changing the current American culture around death that sanitizes and obfuscates death and its associated processes.
Excited to start her next book, also in audio format.
So well written and absolutely loved all the tidbits about the cremation and death industries. It also gave me such a fresh view on my mother's passing and how the views of death I had growing up impacted my grief.
Man, this book hit a lot harder than I expected it to. The only other book I've read by Doughty is [b:Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And other Questions about Dead Bodies 52672113 Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And other Questions about Dead Bodies Caitlin Doughty https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1593186716l/52672113.SY75.jpg 68120089] which delivers death facts in bite sizes and presumably to children as a target audience. I kinda expected this book to be similar, just specifically about crematoriums. Boy, was I wrong. This book was instead more like a semi-autobiography of Doughty's time working in a crematorium in her early twenties. It's clear that this time was a transformative one for her, both in her attitude towards death as well as crystallizing what she wanted to accomplish in changing the modern American attitude to death. In turn, it brings us the readers just that little bit closer to that conversation and confrontation with death and mortality.We are all just future corpses.Preparing for death and how we would like one's body to be disposed after that is undoubtedly a difficult conversation to have with any of our loved ones, and probably an even more difficult one to have with yourself. In this book, Doughty raps hard on the “death-denial culture” that has sprung only in the most recent century or so, calling back on historical times when death has always been a lot closer to people, to homes, to families, and had been an integral part of customs and traditions. She argues that being in denial about what is essentially a fact of life is what is making death that much more traumatizing and difficult to accept and confront when it does happen. I love how she took as an example Siddartha Gautama, who attained enlightenment and became the Buddha of Buddhism because he went out in the world to witness life, suffering, death, and how we all become ashes and dust in the end, and not because he stuck to his sheltered life in the palace without any and every reminder that pain, suffering, and death exists.There has never been a time in the history of the world when a culture has broken so completely with traditional methods of body disposition and beliefs surrounding mortality.It's so timely that I'm reading this book while a Muslim wedding is being held at the public ground floor space of the residential block opposite mine. Because it's public and under government housing, that space is often used for Chinese funerals (wakes) as well as Muslim weddings, baby showers, etc. These occurrences have always been an everyday norm for me but which, I think, might be exactly what Caitlin is trying to advocate here in being less in denial about death.Accepting death doesn't mean you won't be devastated when someone you love dies. It means you will be able to focus on your grief, unburdened by bigger existential questions like “Why do people die?” and “Why is this happening to me?” Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all.This passage in particular was so impactful to me and my own denial about death. I'm probably not alone in fearing mortality and having to confront it, both in myself and in my loved ones. I'm still not 100% there and still in the middle of the process of fully accepting it, but I'm glad that Doughty, through her Youtube channel as well as this book, has kickstarted me in the journey of accepting this ultimate and inevitable outcome of life.
I enjoyed this. Torn between a three or four. This made me question many of my own opinions around death, and I appreciated that. I learned a lot about The death industrial complex that horrified and intrigued me.
I skipped over the chapter on infants.
“Death isn't happening to you. Death is happening to us all”
Definitely quenched my curiosity on the subject of cremation. Answered questions I didn't even think to ask. This book took me a while to get through because it was a bit uncomfortable to read at times.
Wouldn't recommend to those who are squeamish as it talks about what happens to bodies after death in some detail– not limited to cremation either. Discusses other culture practices too.
Wow, this was an amazing book. I loved the author's honesty when talking about the death industry and it really got me thinking about death.
This book is like a lighter version of Mary Roach's “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers”. It still has science, but that is toned down while the personal experiences of the author are turned up. Great book, highly recommend.
Rather strange. The narrator was afraid of death so she started to work at a funeral home? It felt rather forced.
A fascinating combination of memoir and history of the funeral industry. Maybe not for you if you're squeamish, as some of the descriptions are pretty gross (though nothing as intense as [b:Stiff 32145 Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers Mary Roach https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1347656489l/32145.SX50.jpg 1188203], if I remember correctly). Also, there's some description/discussion of stillbirth and infant death, if that's something you don't want to read about or listen to. The author reads the audiobook of this and her experience from “Ask a Mortician” really shows, as she's a very entertaining narrator.
I've recently seen some of the Youtube videos of the author and then I realised hey, she had a book (and for a couple of days now, another one :D), a short little non-fiction thing with a pleasantly simple cover. I'm not really a non-fiction reader, she seems cool, the topic is interesting, so might as well give it a go.
One of the topics the book deals with through anecdotes is our relationship with death. According to Ms. Doughty the problem is our own unwillingness to even just... acknowledge it and how he just can't face our own mortality. How back in the day the dead were laying around at home, how in different cultures they used to do this, that or the other. How it was all more dignified, I guess. Healthier for sure.
But this is where my issue comes from this; I don't necessarily agree. I can't really blame people for not just... being okay with it. Like this is one of those topics when I understand what she is trying to say and I can see her point, but at times it felt like she couldn't really relate to the average person.
I really enjoyed the first part of the book, her being new to the whole death-business, something that is not as clear to the normal person as, lets say, being a teacher or a cook. It was all kind of funny and not too solemn.
Then by the end... she felt like she kind of drifted towards a certain kind of pathos that I really, really wanted to avoid with this. Philosophical musings and all. Not really my thing.
Sometimes it also felt like for someone who was so much about breaking the groupthink, she... kind of also fell into the same mistakes with other topics.
Close to the very end she talks, in a kind of annoyed and disgusted way about how it's almost always white men, super privileged and all who want to prolong their lives and how it's unfair to the poor. Also, when talking about traditions and such, she mostly seems to have an issue with Western people, while all the others are someone elevated though their rituals being so... different. In my younger years I've spend quite a bit of time among more traditional gypsies (calm down, they call THEMSELVES that), some of them being in my own family. If you see people easily spooked by the dead, fearful of death to the extreme and super serious about superstitions with death/your soul being taken/dead bodies, etc. it is them. Somehow she kind of seems to... come with certain prejudices of her own regarding modern Western ways being horrible and cowardly, while everyone else from anywhere or anytime different being good.
Overall, it was a fun, short read, but in some ways I couldn't emotionally connect when I really didn't even want big emotions and such. I just wanted objective things, to know more. I don't really know what else to say about a non-fiction thing. Sorry.
I thought this was brilliant! I loved the story of Caitlin's history in the death industry and the way she worked in some historical anecdotes about different civilisations and religions and their outlook on death. A very interesting read which I would recommend to anyone who isn't too put off by slightly morbid and amusing tales of cremation.
Loved it! A well-considered mix of personal tales and observations about death and the funeral industry's past and future.
A great accompaniment to Atul Gawande's Being Mortal, referenced in the book itself, Caitlyn Doughty talks candidly about our current obsession to remove ourselves from death and in doing so hand over all responsibility to the massive funeral industry.
She's also a hell of a storyteller and the book is shot through with gallows humour. From her start as a 23 year old in a small crematorium and encountering the task of shaving her first corpse to gritting her teeth through mortuary school, what could be a grim read is shot through with humour and warmth. A surprisingly entertaining and informative read.
A series of memoirs that offer an interesting view of the death industry. Doughty works at a crematory, but is skeptical of many aspects of the industry, especially the act of embalming. She shares many fascinating ideas on topics ranging from the many methods of corpse disposal to our country's willful ignorance of the presence of death. While this definitely reads like a person's first publication, a lot of great points are made. I feel that everyone should find a book that discusses this type of topic, and this one is as good as any.