Can we give Grandma a Viking funeral?
Why don’t animals dig up all the graves?
Will my hair keep growing in my coffin after I’m buried?
Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. Here she offers her factual, hilarious and candid answers to thirty-five of the most interesting, sharing the lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn strange colours during decomposition? and why do hair and nails appear longer after death? The answers are all within . . .
Why don’t animals dig up all the graves?
Will my hair keep growing in my coffin after I’m buried?
Every day, funeral director Caitlin Doughty receives dozens of questions about death. Here she offers her factual, hilarious and candid answers to thirty-five of the most interesting, sharing the lore and science of what happens to, and inside, our bodies after we die. Why do corpses groan? What causes bodies to turn strange colours during decomposition? and why do hair and nails appear longer after death? The answers are all within . . .
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Reviews
Fascinating. Taking a no-holds-barred approach, Doughty writes in visceral and engaging detail about an often taboo subject
Consistently good fun
Doughty's answers are as delightful and distinctive as the questions. She blends humour with respect for the dead . . . Her investigations of ritual, custom, law and science are thorough, and she doesn't shy from naming the parts of Grandma's body that might leak after she is gone
[A] delightful mixture of science and humour
Nobody likes to think about mortality, but if you're going to, there are far worse places to start than Doughty. WILL MY CAT EAT MY EYEBALLS? is funny, dark, and at times stunningly existential. As to whether or not your cat will eat your eyeballs? You'll just have to read the book to find out
There's serious science here, but also cultural lessons in death and dying, a little history, and a touch of gruesomeness wrapped in that shroud of sharp, witty humour