Non-fiction 01 Aug 2005 16:48
Stiff
Stiff
Mary Roach
If you want to know what will happen to you after you die, this is the book to get. It’s not about life after death, though, nor is it “spiritual” in any sense. It is about what will happen to your body.
Subtitled “the curious lives of human cadavers”, the book follows the several possible destinations given to human remains after death, from the “standard” ones, such as burial and cremation, to the most unusual ones. You will read about bodies that are used for training plastic surgeons, mounted inside cars to act as crash-test dummies (because sometimes the researchers need to see what types of injury a crash will cause), or even just left outside to rot (to aid forensic researchers).
It is a sensitive subject, and I guess a few people might be offended by the humourous comments of the author (the book is very, very funny); I also guess these people, after reading the cover, would probably not pick up this book anyway, so it’s not much of a problem. Also, a few passages are a little, well, explicit. Not in the sexual sense, but let’s just say that I would advise against reading some of the chapters while eating. The chapter on human decay, in particular, doesn’t make for a good meal-time conversation subject.
The book comes with information on how to donate your body to science (so that it may have a more interesting end than most), but it is entirely US-centric. Still, it may give you ideas.
