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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Cover of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
And Other Lessons from the Crematory

"Morbid and illuminating" (Entertainment Weekly)—a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession.

Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned morbid curiosity into her life's work. She cared for bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, and became an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. In this best-selling memoir, brimming with gallows humor and vivid characters, she marvels at the gruesome history of undertaking and relates her unique coming-of-age story with bold curiosity and mordant wit. By turns hilarious, dark, and uplifting, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals how the fear of dying warps our society and "will make you reconsider how our culture treats the dead" (San Francisco Chronicle).

"Morbid and illuminating" (Entertainment Weekly)—a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession.

Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned morbid curiosity into her life's work. She cared for bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, and became an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. In this best-selling memoir, brimming with gallows humor and vivid characters, she marvels at the gruesome history of undertaking and relates her unique coming-of-age story with bold curiosity and mordant wit. By turns hilarious, dark, and uplifting, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals how the fear of dying warps our society and "will make you reconsider how our culture treats the dead" (San Francisco Chronicle).

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About the Author-
  • Caitlin Doughty is a mortician and the New York Times best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, From Here to Eternity, and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? She is the creator of the web series Ask a Mortician, and the founder of The Order of the Good Death. She lives in Los Angeles, California, where she owns a funeral home.
Reviews-
  • Publisher's Weekly

    August 11, 2014
    In this valiant effort Doughty, a Hawaii-born LA mortician and creator of the web series "Ask a Mortician," uses her work as a crematorium operator at the family-owned Westwind Cremation and Burial in Oakland, Calif., to challenge the way we view death. Having studied medieval history in college, Doughty found an early job with the real deal: feeding the two huge "retorts," the cremation machines in the Westwind warehouse, with corpses—some not so fresh—retrieved by order from private homes or, more often, from hospitals, nursing homes, and the coroner's office. Doughty was eager to prove her mettle, and offered to do any number of odious tasks, such as shaving corpses, or otherwise helping Bruce the embalmer prepare them for the bereaved family's viewing: pumping them with the "salmon pink cocktail" of formaldehyde and alcohol, wielding the trusty trocar, and sewing closed mouths and eyelids. Her descriptions about picking dead babies up from the hospital prove particularly difficult to read. Nonetheless, Doughty does stare death in the face, by tracking down numerous ancient rituals (she observes approvingly how some Eastern cultures still participate in the preparing of the body), pursuing fascinating new words such as "desquamation" and "bubblating" (both refer to excess fluids), and celebrating the natural function of decomposition.

  • Library Journal

    April 15, 2015
    Doughty's memoir tells the story of her first year working as a crematory operator at a small, low-end funeral business in Oakland and her move from there to mortuary school and into the wider world of the funeral industry. The book is part memoir and part meditation on the business and philosophy of death customs in America. Doughty's experiences with grieving families, learning on the job, and conversations with death professionals all come to inform her personal manifesto and commitment to confronting society's chronic death phobia and advocating for families' direct involvement with funeral ritual and customs. The author (best known for her popular "Ask a Mortician" YouTube video series) reads, bringing warmth and frequently humor to a sometimes disturbing subject. This book is not for the faint of heart. Doughty pulls no punches in her frank and often graphic descriptions of what happens to the human body after death, both before and after it arrives at the mortuary. VERDICT Recommended for readers interested in memoirs with a morbid and philosophical angle, an insider's look at the funeral industry, and those who don't fear the gory details of the end of life. ["Even though Doughty's memoir is difficult to stomach at times, it is well researched, candid, and will inspire a careful consideration of one's own mortality," read the starred review of the Norton hc, Memoir, 8/14/14.]--Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib., Atlanta

    Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

  • Katharine Fronk;Booklist, Starred review [Doughty's] sincere, hilarious, and perhaps life-altering memoir is a must-read for anyone who plans on dying.
  • Julia Jenkins;Shelf Awareness Entertaining and thought-provoking.
  • Entertainment Weekly Morbid and illuminating.
  • Rachel Lubitz;Washington Post A book as graphic and morbid as this one could easily suck its readers into a bout of sorrow, but Doughty—a trustworthy tour guide through the repulsive and wondrous world of death—keeps us laughing.
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    W. W. Norton & Company
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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
And Other Lessons from the Crematory
Caitlin Doughty
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