Summary and Reviews of Stiff by Mary Roach

Media Reviews

Baltimore City Paper What's so funny about being dead? Nothing, of course, if it's Grandmother. But those who work with dead bodies frequently, such as the detectives in Homicide, tend to adopt a gallows humor. Mary Roach, who saw her share of corpses by the time she was done researching Stiff, has learned how to cut the tension with a good joke. It turns out that Stiff is one of the funniest, best-written, most thoroughly researched books of the year--a constant pleasure, even when Roach is describing, in graphic detail, exploratory surgery on a cadaver.

Entertainment Weekly (Editor's Choice selection) Because she always draws a distinction between you and your smelly carcass (not the same person, she argues), Roach gets away with the cheerfully morbid smart-ass commentary that abounds throughout. She's written one of the funniest and most unusual books of the year.

New City Chicago Roach's deliberate carefulness diminishes the topic's gore and sets a comfortable, comic tone that finds solace in its own oddity. Certain sections of the book are nothing short of mesmerizing, namely the portions dedicated to the University of Tennessee's body farm, and the analysis of remains after plane crashes. By and large, the dead aren't very talented, Roach writes. They may not be talented, but in Stiff, they sure are fun.

The Chicago Sun-Times One does not skim this book. Every detail is riveting. It is impossible to tear one's eyes away from Roach's description of the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, where at a body farm--a bucolic meadow--scores of donated cadavers decompose noisomely outdoors so that forensic scientists can better learn to sniff out clues from the bodies of murder victims.

The Denver Post Squeamish readers beware! But for the rest, this is an outrageously funny, irreverent (but respectful) account of what happens to the human body after a person has died, and that's far more involved than simple burial or cremation.

The San Francisco Chronicle Roach has done her homework so we don't have to. Her book's a winner.

Outside Mordantly witty

Kirkus Reviews Starred Review. Fascinating, unexpectedly fresh and funny…. informative, yes; entertaining, absolutely.

Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Roach…has done the nearly impossible and written a book as informative and respectful as it is irreverent and witty….Roach has a fabulous eye and a wonderful voice…. impossible to put down.

Library Journal Despite the irreverent, macabre title, this is a respectful and serious examination of what happens to cadavers, past and present.

 Caleb Carr, author of The Alienist As fascinating as it is funny.... The research is admirable, the anecdotes carefully chosen, and the prose lively; and they combine to produce a book that everyone in the health care field should have to read, and everyone else will want to.

 Joe Queenan, author of Balsamic Dreams Mary Roach proves what many of us have long suspected that the real fun in life doesn't start until you're dead. I particularly enjoyed the sections about head transplants, black-market mummies, and how to tell if you're actually dead.

 Susan Orlean, author of The Orchid Thief Droll, dark, and quite wise, Stiff makes being dead funny and fascinating and weirdly appealling.