“The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.” (Stiff by Mary Roach)
One of my favorite things to do is to go to one of those over-the-top kid focused places (which all parents are forced to do at least occasionally by the horror of birthday parties and holidays) and be listening to something really out of sync, like radical feminist literature, steamy m/m romance, etc. Stiff fits the bill admirably with its gruesome talk of cadavers getting shot, exploded, dissected, and just generally decomposing. It’s just wonderful to know that, even though I might be forced to be at a chuck-e-cheese or trampoline place or an over-crowded Easter egg hunt by the fact of having children in modern society – that my mind can still be free to listen to whatever the hell I want to listen to.
Like On Being Mortal, Stiff helps the reader think about what happens after death. Instead of dealing with the psychology of mortality, however, Mary Roach tackles the physical aspect. What happens when you ‘donate your body to science’? What actually happens to decomposing bodies, embalmed bodies, or composted ones? Let me just say this: though I did not come away from the book with a distinct love of wondering about cadavers, I did come away with a distinct love of Mary Roach. Anyone who can maintain that kind of humor with this kind of topic is my kind of person. I loved the contrast of tone and subject.
This book was published so long ago that I wonder what has happened since, in the world of cadavers? Is human composting a widespread thing now? Do medical schools still use human cadavers for anatomy class? Will I ever care enough to google it, if I can’t read the words in Mary Roach’s characteristic voice?
Book Lion 