Books: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - And Other Lessons from the Crematory

In Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Caitlin Doughty details her experience as a crematory worker at "Westwind Cremation & Burial," giving the reader an insider's look at the death industry. There are some gruesome scenes: rivers of rendered human fat overflowing from a retort, the tools for keeping a corpse's mouth closed and eyes shut (when all else fails, use super glue), and the inner workings of the Cremulator, a machine for grinding down burned human remains like a macabre Cuisinart.

If gore is what you are looking for, you'll get your fair share of it in Doughty's memoir; the book is definitely not for the squeamish. However, she also conveys a deeper message about the unhealthy ways modern society has isolated us from the realities of death and dying. Doughty makes a convincing case that the fantasy sold by the mainstream funeral industry - that you can be preserved in death forever as you were in life - is unnatural, and hampers us from grieving over the deceased.