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Caitlin Doughty
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Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory Paperback – September 28, 2015

by Caitlin Doughty (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 12,648 ratings
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"Morbid and illuminating" (Entertainment Weekly)―a young mortician goes behind the scenes of her curious profession.

Armed with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre, Caitlin Doughty took a job at a crematory and turned morbid curiosity into her life’s work. She cared for bodies of every color, shape, and affliction, and became an intrepid explorer in the world of the dead. In this best-selling memoir, brimming with gallows humor and vivid characters, she marvels at the gruesome history of undertaking and relates her unique coming-of-age story with bold curiosity and mordant wit. By turns hilarious, dark, and uplifting, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals how the fear of dying warps our society and "will make you reconsider how our culture treats the dead" (San Francisco Chronicle).

Previous page
  1. Print length
    272 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    W. W. Norton & Company
  4. Publication date
    September 28, 2015
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0393351904
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0393351903
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Demonically funny."
― O, The Oprah Magazine

"Frank…philosophical…engaging, and even wicked."
― Natalie Kusz, New York Times Book Review

"Upbeat, brave and brilliantly, morbidly curious…Her measure of society is fierce, right on, and radical…[A]n important and timely book."
― Helen Davies, Sunday Times

"It may well blow your mind wide open."
― Elisabeth Donnelly, Flavorwire

"Think Sloane Crosley meets Six Feet Under."
― Kevin Nguyen, Grantland

"In a moving―and often funny―memoir about working in a crematorium and other parts of the ‘death industry,’ Caitlin Doughty argues for radical change in how we face the details of death."
― Jessica Ferri, Daily Beast

"Demonically funny dispatches."
― O Magazine

"Doughty…a trustworthy tour guide…keeps us laughing most of the way."
― Rachel Lubitz, Washington Post

"Alternately heartbreaking and hilarious, fascinating and freaky, vivid and morbid, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes is witty, sharply drawn, and deeply moving. Like a poisonous cocktail, Caitlin Doughty’s memoir intoxicates and enchants even as it encourages you to embrace oblivion; she breathes life into death."
― Dodai Stewart, deputy editor of Jezebel.com

"Caitlin Doughty takes you to places you didn’t know you wanted to go. Fascinating, funny, and so very necessary, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes reveals exactly what’s wrong with modern death denial."
― Bess Lovejoy, author of Rest in Pieces: The Curious Fates of Famous Corpses

"This book absolutely must be read, if only to remind all of us that exercise, organic food, and plastic surgery only work up to a point. Doughty is my kind of death crusader―compassionate, unblinking, and very, very funny."
― Meg Rosoff

About the Author

Caitlin Doughty is a mortician and the New York Times best-selling author of Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, From Here to Eternity, and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? She is the creator of the web series Ask a Mortician, and the founder of The Order of the Good Death. She lives in Los Angeles, California, where she owns a funeral home.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (September 28, 2015)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393351904
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393351903
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 12,648 ratings

About the author

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Caitlin Doughty

Caitlin Doughty

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Caitlin Doughty is a writer and death acceptance advocate. She started working in the funeral industry as a crematory operator at age 23, a job described in her first book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Since then she founded the nonprofit Order of the Good Death, started the Ask a Mortician Youtube series, and introduced the movement of death awareness and death positivity in the Western world. She owns a family-centered funeral home in Southern California. Her other New York Times bestsellers are From Here to Eternity and Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?

Customer reviews

4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
12,648 global ratings
Child-molester van.
5 Stars
Child-molester van.
Just started reading this book. From what I have read so far, it's wonderful. Very well written. I can't wait to read more. Don't know if she can top this:Excerpt: oh great, I thought the only two white people here have arrived to take their beloved matriarch away in our roving child-molester van.That hit my funny bone. If you haven't watched her YouTube channel I highly recommend it.
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Top reviews from the United States

StudyingStudent
5.0 out of 5 stars Seriously, just buy it
Reviewed in the United States on September 25, 2014
Verified Purchase
I started this book after doing my evening reading for medical school following an eleven-hour day at the hospital and clinic.

You know how dense you imagine my textbooks are? Maybe take that concept and multiply it by ten. Med school textbooks can be overwhelming even for med school students. I mean, I love reading, which is great because medical students (and physicians) do a TON of it, but I can barely get through The Cat in the Hat after a solid evening of reading following a day at the clinic following a morning at the hospital.

However, I picked up this book in a fit of ambition, planning to read a chapter before snuggling with my cat in front of the TV for the rest of the evening.

Nineteen chapters later, I was snuggling with my cat and had a finished book in front of me. I should've gone to sleep an hour before so I could get up early to get to the hospital, but I kept justifying reading one more chapter to myself. I haven't devoured a book this quickly since I was an undergrad, and I haven't enjoyed a book so thoroughly in at least six months. It beats out the insulin dosing portion of my textbooks in terms of interest!

...I'm in med school. I'm a giant nerd. I think insulin dosing is FASCINATING. Do you have any idea how fascinating something needs to be in order to beat out insulin dosing?

Take that idea and multiply it by ten.

NOW you have an idea of this book's level of fascinating.

I can't recommend this book enough. Everyone dies (as I am quickly learning in medical school), few people have a relationship with death, and even among those of us who do (for instance, I've seen a fair few folks die even in my tenure as a student), Ms. Doughty's relationship to death and the dead is unique. I loved reading about her experiences with stillborn fetuses and babies, with cadavers used in science research, with amputated limbs, with corpses of folks who had died of an MI--very different than my own, but rich in meaning, sincere, respectful, and loving. Her writing style is personal, engaging, warm, and promotes engagement and a desire to collaborate. After just one chapter, I wanted to buy her coffee and chat about corpses which had changed our lives (I had a favorite cadaver in my gross anatomy course. Most folks find this idea strange, but I suspect Ms. Doughty would get it), about dying in our medical system, and about primary care doctors' (whose ranks I hope to join) efforts to change that process.

I wanted to hear more about her career in the death industry, and volunteer to get people thinking about and engaging with death and mortality.

I have zero spare time, but if there was an opportunity to help Ms. Doughty promote death acceptance (without interrupting my coursework or hurting my patients--I am a medical student, after all), I'd figure out a way to find the time to make it work.

That's how interesting and inspirational and powerful her book is.

Buy it, read it, enjoy it, love it, be inspired by it, and pass it on. This is a book you will love and lend out and demand back and read over and over.

Congratulations on an awesome (in the truest sense of the word) debut book, Ms. Doughty! I very much look forward to reading your future books!
9 people found this helpful
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M. L. Asselin
5.0 out of 5 stars Deadly Occupations
Reviewed in the United States on July 29, 2020
Verified Purchase
Caitlin Doughty’s “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory” is a fabulous book. I think it should be recommended reading in high school or freshman year in college. It’s a book about how we Americans run from death, and when we can’t run, we hide from it. It describes an industry that, despite good people in it, including many of the people described in this book, pushes unprepared families to buy expensive options and pursue unnecessary procedures like embalming at a time they are least prepared to consider such things rationally: when a loved one dies.

Doughty doesn’t shrink from the truly unpleasant, and we learn right alongside her of the poor states of some peoples’ bodies at death. Some people’s bodies, found only after some time has past, whether in their homes or in the outdoors, are already badly corrupted. She discusses deaths and bodies of the homeless, the forgotten, and the unloved. She talks about the Golden Gate suicides—most of the book is set in San Francisco—and the conditions of their bodies. We find that sadly, dead children are a common fact of life at a funerary home, and sometimes that their deaths are the result of severely malformed bodies. And she talks a lot about all of us, who tend to not want to think about these things at all, least of all our own deaths. By dealing with some of the most disagreeable aspects of death, including the sights and smells, Doughty helps us to become more comfortable with dead bodies.

Doughty treats these subjects in the context of her own life: graduating with a medieval history degree and realizing that the only job she qualified for was as the “mead wench” at the Renaissance fair, she applies for a job at a crematorium. Later we accompany her as she attends mortuary school. Maybe because she’s learning, too, and maybe because she’s too thoughtful a person, she never disparages her readers even as she criticizes society. Although not religious herself, she is not dismissive or haughty about people’s religious practices.

This is also just a wonderfully written book. Well researched, it isn’t stodgy, nor, as a first-person narrative, is it too breezy. She is humorous and vulnerable and amazingly strong. She makes working with dead bodies almost appealing. Well, almost.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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Nessy D.
5.0 out of 5 stars If you fear of what happens to youe body when you die…
Reviewed in Canada on June 12, 2021
Verified Purchase
Wow. This book! This book takes you through all of the emotions scale, from deep disgust to morbid curiosity, through sadness and laughter. If you fear death or what happens to your body when you die… (and are not afraid of graphic details that are described to feel with your 5 senses), this book is for you. I absolutely adored it. It’s philosophical perspective and existential questioning about death, a subject that makes us uncomfortable but is ultimately the one thing we, all humans have in common. Very well written and carefully punctuated with enough humor and irony to keep you reading through. Heartfelt stories. I loved it! Worth the pennies!
3 people found this helpful
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lauren bruce
5.0 out of 5 stars Poignant, funny, brave
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 5, 2024
Verified Purchase
As a nurse dealing with grief, illness and death i found this book refreshing.
Death has become a taboo subject in our society, something which people tread around uncomfortably, mumbling awkard sympathies. Yet death comes to all us.

This book advocates for a good death and more openess around dying. Its humorous, well written and reflective of much of western society.

I really recommend
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Alan Rodriguez Gonzalez
5.0 out of 5 stars Extremadamente interesante, ameno e importante.
Reviewed in Mexico on December 13, 2019
Verified Purchase
Este libro es excelente. El mensaje que manda es uno que debe ser oído por todo individuo del mundo moderno. No se puede negar la importancia que la muerte tiene en la psique humana, y aún así los medios de comunicación hacen todo lo posible por darle a la muerte la apariencia de tabú, de algo malo, en lo que debe evitarse pensar.
La autora nos lleva en un viaje de reflexión, acompañado con numerosas anécdotas, sobre el destino que nos aguarda a todos. Gran libro.
2 people found this helpful
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SPlannerer
5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of dark humour and startling realizations
Reviewed in Germany on November 8, 2020
Verified Purchase
This book will give you whiplash with realizations about death, the death industry, and yourself.

Besides giving insight in how a body is handled after death, you *will* be forced out of your comfort zone in the best ways possible. Caitlin Doughty manages to do this by re-telling and reflecting on her own experiences while working at a crematory in the most respectfully humorous ways possible.

An absolute recommendation!

P.S.: She also has an amazing YouTube channel (Ask A Mortician), and I recommend checking that out, too. You are guaranteed to fall down a rabbit hole.
One person found this helpful
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Laura
5.0 out of 5 stars Taboe doorbrekend en verassend inhoudelijk
Reviewed in the Netherlands on October 12, 2020
Verified Purchase
Na het lezen van 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes' voel je je een ware expert op het gebied van de wereld de begravenisondernemingen. Niet alleen neemt Caitlin Doughty de lezer mee in opmerkelijke verhalen over bijv. het Tri-State Cremetory scandal maar ook word dieper ingegaan op verschillende nieuwe en duurzame manieren van uitvaart. Het boek is extreem laagdrempelig geschreven en weet een zwaar onderwerp op een luchtige manier te brengen. Al met al is het een verhelderend en verrassend boek waarvan ik hem aan iedereen kan aanraden.
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