This is not an easy read. It's not structured like a memoir or biography. It's bits and pieces of journal writing of a very intelligent, talented younThis is not an easy read. It's not structured like a memoir or biography. It's bits and pieces of journal writing of a very intelligent, talented young writer, but it's not edited for clarity or readability.
I can't imagine reading it without already having some experience and profound empathy for other sufferers of mental illness. It's hard to imagine choosing to do the things Lara describes unless you know that so much of the behaviour, the running, the hurt, doesn't come from choice....more
I'd recommend this to anyone who's found other works on the funeral industry or American approaches to death to be ultimately lacking in relatability,I'd recommend this to anyone who's found other works on the funeral industry or American approaches to death to be ultimately lacking in relatability, or failed to find themselves convinced by the arguments provided by the proponents of the various ways Western society deals with the dead and dying. Doughty's primary point is that we need to be more critical and thoughtful of these methods, with her experiences in the industry illustrating where she has found sense or dissonance.
This is the book I have wished many other books on the funeral industry could be. Critical of the business but less brutally pragmatic as Mitford, more reflective and critical of the gory details of the work than other books by funeral workers, and aware of the anthropology of death without the emotional detachment of academia. Doughty has verbalized so many of the mixed feelings I've walked away with from other books, from classes on the anthropology and archaeology of death, from classes on forensics, from visiting family and friends in hospice, from the offices of funeral directors, and from the funerals of acquaintances and loved ones.
The way we handle death in modern culture is deeply harmful to us and is only going to get harder unless we change things. I am an atheist from a religious background that washes and dresses their dead, even if the family member was not Latter-Day Saint (in the cases of my father and grandfather). I was an atheist when I helped prepare my father's body for his casket and nothing was more integral to my grieving process or my devoutly religious mother's grieving process than the physical reality of handling his corpse. The other thing that helped us grieve healthily was being prepared for his death in a small way by acknowledging and being present during his terminal illness. Doughty's work in the form of this book and her video series are the most accessible materials I've ever encountered that acknowledge and promote what my own experience has shown me.
I find the tone of Doughty's internal monologue familiar - perhaps because we both fall under the Millenial label? I suspect some readers will find the tone of her asides to be inappropriate but I also deal with discomfort with sarcasm and self-aware narration.
My only real criticism is that she doesn't provide conclusions for all of her stories, which is not necessary in this type of narrative but I'm used to authors providing 'endings' to their anecdotes even in personal non-fiction. An anecdote will start and blossom into other analysis but a few times I was left hanging and found myself flipping back a page to see if I had skipped a paragraph. That being said, some conclusions just come later (she acknowledges once or twice after her analysis that a particular story had no real conclusion or no answers were ever yielded in reality) and I prefer it to forcing a moral or an ending when real life rarely provides one. I didn't ever feel like Doughty had manipulated things into just-so stories to augment the goal of the chapter.
The bibliography is an excellent source of further reading and I'll add two books Doughty mentioned in a recent interview that were published, or that she didn't read, until after her book was submitted. They are 'Being Mortal' by Atul Gawande and 'A Deadly Wandering' by Matt Richel....more
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