loosetoothfool 's review for:

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

2.5

informative medium-paced

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this is hard for me to rate, because I enjoyed most of the content of the book, I found it really interesting to learn about the funeral industry/history, ideas around death and the grizzly details of cremation, embalming, and other aspects of mortician work. I found it fascinating and eye opening, I love learning about things I'd never have known otherwise! however, the authors prejudices, biases, judgements, just bizarre disgusting comments and flippant jokes about dead people really soured this. ive read a lot of reviews that mirror what I was thinking when reading this because I knew I wasn't alone in noticing the authors racist biases, like always mentioning the race of someone only if they weren't white, strange comments about race that were meant to be jokes, imitating of accents, judgements about cultures different to hers, etc. what she wrote and said about a man who had committed suicide was frankly disgusting. the way she talked about dead babies was very insensitive. I get that you would become desensitized to these things doing her job, and she does talk a bit about that, but the complete lack of respect and passing of judgement for the dead that came across was at odds with what she said about her respect for death. i knew this book was going to be gross and likely disturbing at times, and I'm completely fine with that! in fact I found it fascinating to hear the gruesome details of her job. but this isn't the same as how she writes about dead bodies that are people, people with families and loved ones, especially about the babies, especially about other stories where she describes details of various different situations with families of the dead people, who if they read this book would know she's talking about them. she has clear biases about homeless people, drug users, oh and fat people, the way she talked about fat bodies was also so awful. apart from all these issues, I also had issues with the storytelling and structure - at times I had to go back a few times in the audiobook because I was like, what are we talking about right now? she sometimes switched topics in a way that confused me. also the last few chapters I found far less interesting, when she started sharing more about her own life and journey in the death industry, I didn't really care about knowing her personal life story, rather than learning about the industry and process and death in general. this didn't really leave me with a deep message that she clearly wants to leave readers with. her message was a bit confusing, but I get where she's coming from. ehhhh this could've been so interesting... from a different author. I can't get over all her horrible views literally written right into this book. did she thinks no-one would notice? or does she really think she's so quirky and funny? I also listened to this as an audiobook, narrated by her, which didn't help. however, it was an engaging listen! I enjoyed listening to it for the most part! I went on a few walks at the beach while listening which was lovely. i liked most of the chapters and how she told her story intertwined with facts and info, I do think she's a good enough writer. a really strange book to review