Stiff

I’m writing about a character who works in a funeral home so I’ve been researching dead bodies for a while now. By far, the most engrossing (gross!) resource I’ve run across is Mary Roach’s Stiff (The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers). She has another book called Spook, which “tackles the afterlife” and I’m looking forward to that one, too.

Here is the first paragraph of Stiff and it’s a doozy:

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.

The book gets even better from there.

In keeping with the spirit, I give you Dead Man's Party: