Book Review: Stiff and Marvels
Oct 10th, 2008 by jeremy
Two for the price of one this week, aren’t you all so lucky? I realized I’m not going to finish 52 books by the end of the year because I started a few weeks late, so I’m going to have to do two a week once or twice. First up, Stiff.
Stiff was written by the same author of Bonk (my thirty-fifth review), Mary Roach, and is my fortieth book in 52 weeks. It’s written in the same style as Bonk, and examines death, dead bodies, and the surrounding subjects in a scientific but humorous way.
I’m not sure what this says about me, but I found the dead body book much more interesting than the sex book.
Roach interviews student that learn by dissecting the bodies, plastic surgeons that practice on the dead, and even more students that learn how bodies fall apart by stashing them in a special forest that’s been set aside just for this purpose. The information about how bodies change and react to death was endlessly interesting. I didn’t even bother to put it down while I ate my lunch and the book compared decaying body parts to chicken soup.
A chapter looks at the dead being useful to the rest of us by being thrown into windshields, hit in the shoulders by machines and being yanked around to test various safety measures developed in vehicles. And every chapter contains the funny footnotes that seem to be the author’s calling card in the two books I’ve read. She’s very smart and has a sharp wit that comes through in the before mentioned notes as well as the questions and comments she makes to the people she is interviewing. She’s careful never to make fun of the bodies being used, and is quick to point out what benefit it is to all of us (including an example of Chinese surgeons that had to learn without actually opening bodies.
Head transplants, body snatchers and the first embalmers are all discussed. It’s all fascinating and entertaining.
B+
Marvels by Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross is book forty-one in 52 weeks.
Marvels isn’t the typical graphic novel that follows someone like Spider-man or a group like the X-men. Instead it’s told from a normal citizens point of view, looking at these superheroes as freaks or gods. These are the people that get hit by cement when two superheroes are fighting, or the one that loses his car when the Hulk throws it at a bad guy.
Phil Sheldon is a newspaper photographer that starts seeing these “marvels” around the city he lives in. And he’s the one that we experience the dread and helpless feeling through when he encounters these people that can fly, shoot beams from their eyes and destroy whole cities by themselves. He also reports on how the regular people around him react the superhumans, whether with fear or awe. It almost isn’t a superhero book with so much of the plot being centered on regular people and how they
The art is beautiful. Alex Ross is well known in the comic book world for his detailed paintings and illustrations. He uses live models for all of the art in the book, and it looks great. The only downside is there are many hidden things in the illustrations that only comic-book fans might get, but this doesn’t take away from the actual story and artwork.
A
Other people reading 52 books in 52 weeks.
* Jaime reviews Killing Monsters by Gerard Jones
* Heliologue reviews Watchmen by Allan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
* Nick reviews Gravity Journal by Gail Sidonie Sobat
I’ll probably pick up Stiff as well. I read one of Roach’s other books, Spook, a few weeks ago and liked it better than Bonk as well. I bet she actually drew on a lot of the same research for both books. I had kind of avoided Stiff because it sounded like it might make me squeamish, though. I don’t mind corpses per se, but I figured there would be a lot of stuff in there about autopsies and the moment of death itself, which kinda makes me squirm.
Stiff sounds like a great book. Does she mention how people volunteer their bodies for the safety-feature experiments? I can’t even imagine being the person responsible for collecting the volunteered corpses. Gross, but fascinating.
I read stiff when mom gave it to me for Christmas (I think) a couple years ago. Fascinating read. I think Jordan originally recommended it to me.
Jaime, I plan on reading Spook sometime this year. There was some really gross stuff in Stiff, but nothing too extreme.
Sarah, people usually just donate their bodies, and in most cases will never know how it’s going to be used.