Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory by Caitlin Doughty

5 reviews

haleyhorrorshow's review against another edition

dark emotional funny hopeful informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

"Sifting through an urn of cremated remains you cannot tell if a person had successes, failures, grandchildren, felonies."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Medical content, and Grief

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts, Cannibalism, and Death of parent

Minor: Cancer, Violence, Vomit, and Car accident

nikenacs's review against another edition

funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.75

I picked this up not thinking much of it, both because I'd had a recent death in my family and because my local library was offering the e-book. And man, I'm so happy I read this. It took me a while to get into it, but when I did, I was INTO IT.

The ins and outs of the crematorium are interesting enough, but the true strength of this book is in its reflections on our society's attitude towards death. Absolutely 10/10 on that front. As someone who has had little to no contact with death in my personal life, this gave me a lot to think about. 

Very US-centric, which is not a bad thing, but instead made me very curious to research how the funeral industry works in Germany, and Western Europe in general. 

A tad superficial at times, oftentimes a chapter ended just when I felt like we were really getting into it. I appreciate that it combined more light-hearted personal memoir elements with philosophy and history as well as politics, but it could have been a tad more of the latter for my taste. 

But all in all, I'm not being hyperbolic when I say this opened my eyes on how we treat both our dead and our dying.  Will be recommending, will be checking out more of Doughty's work. 

(And on a personal note, I knew I was right when I wanted to set up my testament and funeral wishes when I was in elementary school! Take that, parents.) 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Vomit, Car accident, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Cancer, Fatphobia, Terminal illness, Violence, and Cannibalism

Minor: Addiction, Miscarriage, and Abortion

cadence99's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

2.5

What I liked:
•the discussion of death practices in various cultures 
•the authors personal musings on how best to manage the image and processing of death

What I didn’t like:
•chapters feel a bit disjointed in their themes
•the repeated use of race as a descriptor for ONLY non-white people when it is irrelevant to the narrative of the story being told
•pretty gross anti-fat comments, primarily in one particular section where she talks about her coworker declaring that despite the medical examiners determination to the contrary, the person MUST have died of a heart attack from being so fat and “This is why you can’t be fat!”- in addition to describing in great detail how fat bodies smell worse, but then dismissing the coworkers comments as “just fact” (even though he is literally ignoring fact by assuming the mans cause of death is not the one determined by the examiners professional assessment)
• in the same scene as above, repeatedly bringing up how her coworkers continually mistakenly say the person is Mexican, despite him being Salvadoran 
•irrelevant added story where a coworker says they should fire bomb the city of San Francisco because it is a “hell pit”

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Body horror, Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Fatphobia, Gore, Gun violence, Infertility, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Racism, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Car accident, Abortion, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

ju_harue's review against another edition

dark emotional informative reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Mental illness, Suicide, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Dementia, Grief, Cannibalism, Medical trauma, Death of parent, and Murder

spookily's review against another edition

dark emotional informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Suicide, Terminal illness, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Cancer, Drug abuse, Drug use, Miscarriage, Violence, Dementia, War, and Classism

Minor: Fatphobia, Sexism, Excrement, Car accident, Pregnancy, and Alcohol