Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Categories
Memoirs

SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

Caitlin Doughty

And Other Lessons from the Crematory

Bringing mortality back into culture, this unusual memoir by a celebrated mortician explains a process we don't care to think about. Check out author's popular YouTube Show "Ask A Mortician".

Most people want to avoid thinking about death, but Caitlin Doughty—a twenty-something with a degree in medieval history and a flair for the macabre—took a job at a crematory, turning morbid curiosity into her life’s work. With an original voice that combines fearless curiosity and mordant wit, Caitlin tells an unusual coming-of-age story full of bizarre encounters, gallows humor, and vivid characters (both living and very dead). Describing how she swept ashes from the machines (and sometimes onto her clothes) and cared for bodies of all shapes and sizes, Caitlin becomes an intrepid explorer in the world of the deceased. Her eye-opening memoir shows how our fear of dying warps our culture and society, and she calls for better ways of dealing with death (and our dead). In the spirit of her popular Web series, “Ask a Mortician,” Caitlin’s engaging narrative style makes this otherwise scary topic approachable, compassionate and profound. Caitlin writes with uncanny poise about a process most of us approach with willful ignorance, and it is that ignorance she wishes to dispel – with a generous dose of humor, fearless curiosity (she pulls no punches, and some of the material is graphic), and an unexpected warmth that underlies both her writing and her person. Caitlin Doughty has a degree in medieval history from the University of Chicago and a longstanding interest in the macabre. She is a licensed funeral director in Los Angeles, the host of a YouTube program, “Ask a Mortician”, and has appeared on NPR, in the Los Angeles Times, and various other outlets. She lives in Los Angeles. https://vimeo.com/88266533 (the password is "doughty")

Available products
Book Published 2014-09-01 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. - New York (USA)

Comments

Morbid and illuminating.

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.

[Doughty’s] sincere, hilarious, and perhaps life-altering memoir is a must-read for anyone who plans on dying.

Demonically funny dispatches.

UK: Canongate Dutch: Atlas French: Payot & Rivages Chinese commplex: Ping's Publication chinese simplified: Beijing Yiron Books co.

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.

Entertaining and thought-provoking.

Caitlin Doughty is best known for her YouTube series Ask a Mortician, and she brings the same charisma and drollery to her essay collection Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Think Sloane Crosley meets Six Feet Under… After confronting mortality day in and day out, Doughty becomes more philosophical about her job. Evoking Kafka, she writes that 'the meaning of life is that it ends.' Everything must come to an end; it’s just a shame this book eventually does too.