Roach, Mary: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

  Amazon  

I defy anyone to dislike a book whose first sentence is "The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship." Mary Roach's grand tour of the afterlives of corpses makes for compelling--and very often hilarious--reading. The book opens with the first of many colorful scenes, a roomful of plastic surgeons practicing their grotesque (at the best of times) trade on a bunch of severed heads. "The heads have been put in roasting pans--which are of the disposable aluminum variety--for the same reason chickens are put in roasting pans: to catch the drippings." As this passage illustrates, the author keeps the tone of her book light. She is a clever writer, and she makes the sorts of observations of her grim material that the Mystery Science Theater bots might make.

But however light her touch, Roach is describing some truly horrific things. There is, for example, the body farm at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where bodies go to rot for science, their skin sloughing off and their genitalia bloating in full view of researchers and their guests--who leave with their footwear uncleanably soiled with the "liquids of human decay." There is the graduate student who composted a ne'er-do-well to see how efficacious a means of disposal mulch-making might be for third-world countries. ("And because the man was buried whole, Evans had to go out with a shovel and rake to aerate him three or four times.") And there is Roach's attempt--failed--to verify the details of a 1991 Reuter's article which claimed that "a man who worked in a crematorium in Hainan Province was caught hacking the buttocks and thighs off cadavers prior to incineration and bringing the meat to his brother, who ran the nearby White Temple Restaurant." Roach hired an interpreter to facilitate her discussion with the director of the crematorium she believed had employed the buttock-hacker. But how to explain to the interpreter what she needed to know?

"In the cab, I tried to think of a way to explain to Sandy what I was about to have her do. I need you to ask this man whether he had an employee who cut the butt cheeks off cadavers to serve in his brother's restaurant. No matter how I thought of phrasing it, it sounded ghastly and absurd. Why would I need to know this? What kind of book was I writing?"

For those with a strongish stomach, Mary Roach's book is, really, a delightful read. And eye-opening. And  unlike most books, it may have the quite real effect of influencing your after-lifestyle choices.