Reviews tagging 'Suicidal thoughts'

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes & Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

113 reviews

12dejamoo's review against another edition

informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.0

Touching, funny, serious when it needed to be. Just such a delight to read, and definitely provided some food for thought. This review is highly cliche but the book is good

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Child death, and Death of parent

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide attempt

Minor: Suicide, Drug use, and Drug abuse

Yes there are icky descriptions of dead bodies but it's not really done for shock value, just to tell stories and make observations. The tone is also very light so mostly it doesn't feel too agh

motypeandroid's review against another edition

medium-paced

3.5

3.5 stars
I really enjoyed learning abt the inner workings or the mortuary world, and would probably read more it given the chance. However, I realized while listening to the audiobook that I don’t like how miss ask a mortician speaks about certain topics. Those things might have changed since this book is nearly a decade old, but it just irked me a bit. Idk. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Child death, Blood, and Death of parent

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Fatphobia, and Suicide

Minor: Xenophobia

edgwareviabank's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

4.0

The death industry isn't easiest subject matter to handle, and Caitlin Doughty manages to get across some yet that never feel morbid or unbearably heavy. While the book starts with a few anecdotes about her experience in a crematory, and stories from her job continue to be told throughout the book, her key message becomes clear a few chapters in: the Western world's habit of avoiding any kind of reflection on mortality should change. 

The arguments are strong. It's easy to take a lot of our rites and customs around death and the dying for granted and believe they are how things have always been done; however, what's really at the heart of them is an impulse to keep death and decay out of sight, in a way that would have felt unnatural before technological progress started enabling people to put structure around the desire to forget we will all die one day. Once Doughty begins talking about the evolution of the funeral industry, and how perfectly it fit with the logic of capitalism and marketing, it's hard to argue with her point of view.

I picked up this book because I know myself enough to know I elude the thought of mortality when given the chance. In fact, when it does hit me, it very often leaves me terrified. I thought staring straight at it on the pages might shift that mindset at least a little bit, and that's exactly what happened, thanks to the author's  balanced tone of voice and arguments - and yes, her gallows humour too, which is very much up my street. Highly recommended, even though I'm not necessarily on board with all the "natural death" practices author advocates for (but no one has to agree with every single word in order to enjoy a book, right?).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Medical content

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts

clarathromycin's review against another edition

challenging dark funny hopeful informative reflective fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Death, Religious bigotry, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Classism, Colonisation, Death of parent, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, and Suicide

Moderate: Dementia, Sexism, Cannibalism, Cultural appropriation, and Drug use

Minor: Sexual harassment

sandrabooks's review against another edition

informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Gore, Death, and Blood

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide

shaniad's review against another edition

dark emotional funny informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

3.0

The book was interesting and informative enough to keep me reading and I finished it in a day. The book lacks a story though, most of it is the rambling thoughts of Caitlin and the book flies through her life so quickly that I developed no connection with her. I’m not really sure what the point of the book was

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Child death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, and Suicide attempt

sarahbythebook's review against another edition

emotional funny informative medium-paced

5.0

This was an excellent book! It has a similar tone to Mary Roach’s Stiff, but as a memoir, it achieves a much more personal quality. It’s rare for a book to make me tear up, but this one did it—and then had me laughing a few pages later.

Bruce and Mike and the various decedents are rich figures, made all the better for the fact that they’re real. This book is more than an amusing memoir of a crematorium worker, though. Doughty is pushing back against American death culture, challenging our understanding and pushing us to dig deeper into what we know and want from life—and death.

Between this and Stiff, I’ve been thinking a lot more about what I want and don’t want once I die, and it’s not so scary once you get that peak behind the curtain. 

Highly recommend. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Suicide attempt

katyjo13's review against another edition

challenging dark funny informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.0

I felt all the emotions while reading this one, and you will too. This will satisfy a lot of your morbid curiosities regarding crematoriums/ undertakers. Do not read during a depressive episode. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide attempt

There is a chapter where the author recounts having the intention to end her life. Since this is a memoir, it obviously doesn't occur, and I think the addition was necessary to the book.

thereadingnurse2021's review against another edition

funny informative reflective fast-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Child death, Gore, Medical content, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, and Terminal illness

motleybooksandtea's review against another edition

adventurous funny informative medium-paced

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Suicide