Book review: Down Among the Dead Men

The Kindle daily deal does lead to me choosing some unlikely reading material at times, like when at some point I must have decided a memoir of life in a mortuary sounded like fun for all the family. (Or maybe without realising it I have a thing for medical memoirs, what with this and Sirens a few months ago.) In any case Michelle Williams' Down Among the Dead Men is a pretty interesting read, if not perhaps quite as much of a revelation as the author seems to think (maybe I'm just immune to how bizarre people can really be by now.)

In her book, Williams is working in a care home and not particularly satisfied when she sees a job advertised in a mortuary. Soon she's cutting open and disemboweling cadavers, and dealing with the relatives the dead have left behind. Her attempts to argue that her choice of career doesn't mean she's an especially morbid person aren't exactly successful - I hadn't particularly assumed she would be on the gothy side until she brought it up, I'd just assumed the profession attracts pretty pragmatic people, which she and her colleagues clearly are. There's some sad and funny stories around death, and for the most part it's entertaining, although I thought the sheer level of hilarity that greeted a man who'd hanged himself in an auto-erotic asphyxiation accident while wearing women's underwear took its supposed humour from a trans-phobic place. Overall it's interesting enough, although I don't think Williams is uncovering quite as alien a world as she thinks - even if it's one I'd rather not have to work in myself.