(book review)

Caitlin Doughty is a former pathologist, current university lecturer, and funeral home owner. The idea to write such an unusual book came to her after several strange and truly extraordinary questions that students asked about her work. So, yes, ‘Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?’ is not an ordinary book.

The genre of the work is non-fiction, that is, you should not wait for some mystical transformations or shocking plot twists. Unless you are so impressed by the facts read in the book. The book is composed, accordingly, of the strange questions that Kathleen Doughty heard at her lectures and the answers to them. In fact, that is a collection of stories.

As you could already understand from the title and the topic of the questions, the main theme of the book is death and the processes that take place with the human body after death. There you will find answers to why people are wrapped sometimes in the film when buried, where they will bury the bodies, when there will be a shortage of free land, how the body decomposes, and what changes occur to it when a person dies, and much, much more.

The book is not written to scare or tell scary things, quite the opposite. The author aimed to explain to people the mystical and astonishing aspects of death, which people, even taking into account the development of the modern world, still remain mystical and taboo. The book describes the scientific part of the process, and there are no kidney-blood-skulls that will rob you of sleep for half a week.

In particular, I want to talk about the author’s style. It is DIVINE!!! Caitlin writes with unabashed humor, curiosity and excitement that is shared with readers. It would only be necessary to change the subject of the book and you would get the funniest book among all possible ones, I guarantee you.

It is also worth mentioning the chic design of the book. Thematic and not-at-all-scary illustrations become one of the main features of this book. And the cartoon skeletons have definitely escaped from Walt Disney’s early animations and are about to pick up canes, put on hats and start a merry dance.

Summarizing all of the above, I want to emphasize once again that you should not treat the book ‘Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?’ in a biased way because of its subject matter. I assure you, after reading the first chapter, you will not be able to remain indifferent or horrified, it will capture your attention from the first pages to the very end. I think, it is a good idea for you to buy and read this book, there is a lot of interesting, funny and impressive things waiting for you in it, you will not regret it.

Definitely ten dancing skeletons out of ten!

PS Attention! Spoiler!!! The cat still won’t eat the eyes, but something else can.