26/20/2020
3 ⭐
“Sifting through an urn of cremated remains you cannot tell if a person had successes, failures, grandchildren, felonies. “For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Very difficult to read and not something I'd recommend reading while you eat. However, this is also an incredibly important book. It can be incredibly graphic and Doughty doesn't shy away from giving you all the gruesome details but, I think that's a good and very necessary thing, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes doesn't shy away from death, in fact, it explains it to you in great detail. You learn the history of funeral and death practices and reactions within different cultures and also shows how our reactions (particularly in the Western World) have changed so dramatically, even just in the last couple of hundred years.

I also thought it was particularly interesting to learn about biases and stereotypes within the funeral and death "business". Like, for example how fatphobic, in general, the business is. Something you don't have to think about until it's right in front of you forcing you to think about it so I appreciate Doughty discussing it.

So yeah, all in all, this isn't a perfect book and I did have my little issues with it but, I think everyone should at least give it a read (or look at some more in-depth reviews than mine). Smoke Gets In Your Eyes forces us to confront our unhealthy and almost silent relationship with death (most notably in the Western World) and recognise that ignoring death isn't a helpful or healthy approach or response.

Trigger Warnings: Depictions of OCD, Mentions of PTSD, Discussions of and Mentions of Suicide, Mentions of Homelessness, Cannibalism, Dead Bodies (Graphic Depictions), Rituals, Autopsies, Loss of A Loved One, Grief, Fatphobic comments, Racism, Graphic Depictions of Decomposition (corpses)

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