REVIEW: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Mary Roach. (2004) W. W. Norton & Company (Pub). Paperback. 304 pages.

"The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship."

What you see is not all you get, with this title...which is probably a good thing, if you don't want to come off as "that creepy, weird girl/guy who laughs in the face of Death." After reading Stiff, perhaps you will find some comfort in knowing that someone else is laughing with you, and laughing twice as loudly. On the surface, Stiff is a detailed account of the possibilities that await our bodies after death. Roach covers topics as far-reaching as plastic surgery, decomposition, (after)life as a human crash-test dummy, and crucifixion experiments. The author's narratives frequently flip-flop between gruesome and often disturbing details, irreverent humor, and compassion for the departed.

What I find most interesting are the bizarre accounts of how humanity arrived at our present state of affairs, concerning death. There is some great, journalistic research, here. Early stories recounting the history of anatomy and surgical experimentation make me happy to have been born in these modern times, but they still put me off of doctors for a while. (Oh gods, NO! Not the puppies! ...he put his whole hand WHERE!? Without anesthesia?) Luckily, the horror is mitigated by Roach's frequent tangents and jabs at everyone's sanity, including her own.

The book also asks a lot of open-ended questions, either direct or implied. For example, do the benefits of experimentation on the dead outweigh the ethical concerns associated with the practice? Would we react differently if we were given access to all of the gory details? Ultimately, Roach states her opinions--very delicately, without being pushy--but allows readers to draw their own conclusions. (For the record, she saves any questions about Self and Soul for her follow-up title Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.)

Rating: 4.5/5

My Stories:
To be fair, I've actually read this book before. One night, as a joke, I thought that I would be funny and horrible, and offer to read the first chapter to my boyfriend...as a bedtime story. A bedtime story that begins with severed heads in roasting pans.* We started to talk about differences between men and women concerning their centers of gravity, which turned into a genuine curiosity about cutting one another in half to weigh the pieces. Now that's love. As a gift to my boyfriend, I thought I would continue the joke and start reading to him again.

*Amusingly, one of our mutual friends used to host a website to store a bunch of oddities from high school and college. It was called "I Roast Heads."**
**...and holycrapitstillexists. Let's just say I warned you. I Roast Heads!***
***An appropriate quote from the iroastheads.com quote page:
"'yeah, funeral music always sucks.'...'well, they won't hear it!'"
-somebody and hassell