CBR17 Bingo: Review – I first came across Caitlin Doughty and her books through numerous reviewers on Goodreads.
Caitlin Doughty had been long fascinated with death, but when she started working at a crematory, she soon found herself more interested in the question of why death in America has become so distant from the general public.
I am maybe not the right audience for Doughty’s message about the loss of intimacy and ritual in the American way of death. I am a Hindu, and we have tons of death ritual. We lay out our dead at home for visitors all bedecked with flowers with white cloth stuffed up their noses, and people come visit and cry, and then finally we cremate them on pyres, with lots of religious stuff that I don’t fully comprehend going on in between. I don’t think I’ve ever even been to an American-style funeral. But my paternal grandparents both died in the last couple of years, so I suppose death has been my mind more than ever lately.
Doughty tells the story of her time working at the West Wind crematorium, which is where that famous critic of American funereal practices Jessica Mitford had her own body handled. In accordance with her beliefs that death should be looked in the eye, Doughty does not shy away from sharing the often smelly and bizarre realities of her job. But her compassion for the deceased and their loved ones shines through, and she has the sneaky trick of using a blackly humorous situation to lead you into thinking more deeply about American societal attitudes toward death in ways that you’ve never thought of them before.
I did think the book began to stall a little bit after Doughty leaves her job at West Wind – she’s looking for direction after her disillusionment with the funeral industry, and the book unfortunately ends up looking for direction too. I do think the last chapter nicely brings things full circle though.
Doughty narrates her own book. While I don’t always love authors reading their own books (because narrating an audiobook is hard!), I thought she did an excellent job capturing her own (duh), sometimes humorous, sometimes sombre, sometimes bemused but always likable voice. I’m sure I’ll check out some of her other books.