Quick-take: Rapid-fire questions of shallow depth.

Dan's Review

Caitlin Doughty is America's real-life Wednesday Addams from Addams Family. I appreciate her take on death... it is the natural conclusion of life. "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" was a good comfort read on the anniversary of my father's passing. In the 5 years since she wrote that book, I learned Caitlin Doughty has now achieved her dream of starting her own mortuary. She has also become a celebrity -- being the go-to media contact about the death industry and death in general. Congrats on her success.

It was the strength of that book I decided to give "Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?" a go. It answers such questions "Can we have a Viking Funeral?" Answer: No. "After I die, will my cat eat me?" Answer: No, but your dog might.

The book is roughly 30 of such questions in 7-min segments. The vast majority of these could've been easily answered with an online search or simply pondering for a few minutes --"If I bury my dog, will an animal eat it?" Answer: Depends on how deep you bury it. All answers are in Caitlin's entertaining and death acceptance style.

There were a couple questions only a mortician would really know. "Can I keep my father's skull?" Answer: No. That one surprised me. Surely, if all the legal paperwork and signatures were in order... Answer: No. Another surprise: Some of these answers depend on what state you died in. All the states have their own set of death laws.

Despite mostly being short answers to simple questions, I believe the real value in the book is Caitlin collecting all these small questions into a single volume. Often the most difficult problem is knowing what question to ask. Score: 3/5. This is not as hard-hitting as "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", but was still enjoyable. The format made the uninteresting questions easy to skip.