Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

Hardcover | Kindle | Audiobook

Earlier this month I read Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty.

I will start by saying that this book probably isn't for everyone — though it likely should be.

Doughty is the proprietor of  the Order of the Good Death website and the creator-host of the Ask a Mortician YouTube series. So, as you can probably guess, her work tends to focus on things most of us would rather not think about: dying, decay, cremation, and burial.

Nevertheless, it's a good read.  Doughty goes through the various steps of her life which led her to become not only a crematory operator and a licensed mortician, but also a proponent of "death positivity".

Her writing is witty and engaging, even when the subject matter might be otherwise disgusting, off putting, or taboo.  The book, overall, is conversational in tone and you can hear the author's voice (if you know it from her videos) as you read.

The only thing is, it may be uncomfortable for some readers: it deals very frankly with death, with Doughty's own struggles with OCD and depression, and, most importantly, with the death industry as most of us have never known it.  It goes into some detail about what it takes to make your average corpse as "presentable" as most of us think it should be, and it's not pretty.

But it's a very good read and I do recommend it highly; it will almost certainly teach you things you didn't know before.