Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

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

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