Reviews with content warning for Grief - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Reviews tagging 'Grief'

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

78 reviews

weelasswithabook's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful informative sad medium-paced

4.5

CW: graphic descriptions of death, decomposition, body preparation, mentions of baby death and loss, cannibalism, suicide

🌟 Non Fiction
🌟 Popular Science/Autobiographical

This was an interesting read. At surface level, it's a book filled with insights and tidbits of information regarding the life of a crematorium worker. At it's heart, it explores the reckoning of coming to terms with your own mortality and making a difference moving forwards.

Featuring rather gruesome descriptions of death, the decomposition process and pre-burial/cremation preparations, I'd approach with caution if you have a weak stomach. There's also something triggering about the emotionally detached discussions around disposal of infant remains (although not don't callously, it did deeply affect me in a certain way), but it's relevant to the book itself.

One thing that jumped out to me and changed my perceptions was CDs lack of judgement. Exploring different cultures post mortem processes, there was no criticisms there, only the acceptance that something that seems so abstract and gruesome to us is part of someone's sacred culture. For example, tribal rituals where cannibalism is involved. Most people would recoil instantly, buy Doughty discusses these rituals with respect and emphasising how this is simply a different cultures practise and how to them, our ideals of cremation and/or preserving corpses would be looked down upon. So I really appreciated that aspect of it.

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charlottedow's review against another edition

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challenging dark funny informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.0

Not for the faint of heart (or stomach) but an incredible exploration of the death industry in America and the concept of death positivity.

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raekit's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative medium-paced

3.25

Doughty is detailed and direct. If you don’t want to the details of bodies decomposing or burning, take a pass on this one. First the good: I liked knowing more about what exactly happens to our bodies after we die. I also like her assertion that was have moved too far from death and that this is not good for us as humans. Now the bad: there is one chapter where a chunk of the focus is on a very fat person who is recently deceased and it does that fat phobic thing of “just stating facts” but the reality is they are tied to a human. It was really the only part where I felt the people she cared for were written about disrespectfully but it was bad.

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bumblebre's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

4.0

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indieandajean's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

I'm a massive fan of Caitlin Doughty and the work she is doing through the Order of the Good Death to change the American perspective of death and mourning from our modern moment of hiding and sanitizing death towards a more traditional mourning ritual of home funerals and natural primarily non-embalmed means of body disposal. I'd read her other two books, but had yet to read this one because I was concerned that as her debut publication, it wouldn't contain her strong narrative voice and nonchalance about the details of death.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that this was untrue and that this book was not only extremely well written, but was the key to understanding why Caitlin's death fascination began and how she used her experiences to start the order. This book is a fantastic piece of memoir, and it is also a great place for the uninitiated to start when learning more about the good death and the ways in which we can begin to challenge the funeral industry as it exists today.

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