Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

 Book 57 of my 2025 Reading Challenge

read from July 28 - August 1

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty

published 2014

Summary (via the book jacket)

Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned a fascination with death 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. 

My Opinion

4 stars

This is a book I've owned for awhile and in my quest to read what I own and purge my shelves, I'm glad I finally read this and know it will find more readers when I move it out of the house. 

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."  As an adult human, your dust is the same as my dust, four to seven pounds of grayish ash and bone.

I feel like I've heard of this author before, probably through her Internet stuff, but have never actually read her before.  I'm surprised it's called a memoir because it's pretty much about her job with a few personal asides thrown in here and there.  I enjoyed the book because the job is what I was interested in but I wouldn't consider it a memoir or her life story.

Something about the lines, "In many ways, women are death's natural companions.  Every time a woman gives birth, she is creating not only a life, but also a death." really struck me as beautiful and poignant.

Reading something written in 2014 warning about the potential shortage of physicians and caretakers in 2020 reminded me of a math problem with multiple paths to the same answer.  Yes, there were shortages in 2020 and beyond but no, the main reason wasn't what they were concerned about in 2014 (an increase in the aging population).