Barb S. (okbye) -
Helpful Score: 1
A memoir of a 30 year old woman's first year working in a Gloucestershire, England mortuary. I got this book on my kindle knowing nothing but the title so I didn't realize it was a British book which is not a bad thing but it did mean the book wasn't quite about what I thought it would be. Apparently what they call a mortuary in England we call a morgue, so this is set in a hospital morgue not a funeral home. I learned there are quite a few differences in the ways we handle our dead. What they call the coroner is a judge who determines the cause of death in a courtroom from the reports and if needed testimony of the people who were involved in handling the body but never sees or touches a body themselves while what we call the coroner is the person who goes to the scene and does the autopsy themselves and then reports to a judge if a legal determination is needed. They also bring bodies from accidents and murder scenes into the regular hospital morgue instead of having a separate one. This is not a book for the faint hearted, if you don't wish to know exactly how they remove the organs from a body still attached to each other in one long piece then this isn't the book for you. Ms Williams is no writer, most people have done better work in high school essays, and her life outside of her job is boring as can be but she still has to go on about it a bit, but she does have some pretty interesting things to say about her profession. Overall I enjoyed the book and learned a lot of interesting stuff.
