Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker in Training
Tom Jokinen, 2010
De Capo Press
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780306818912
Summary
At forty-four, Tom Jokinen decided to quit his job in order to become an apprentice undertaker, setting out to ask the questions: What is the right thing to do when someone dies?
With the marketplace offering new options (go green, go anti-corporate, go Disney, be packed into an artificial reef and dropped in the Atlantic...), is there still room for tradition? In a year of adventures both hair-raising and hilarious, Jokinen finds a world that is radically changed since Jessica Mitford revised The American Way of Death, more surprising than Six Feet Under, and even funnier and more illuminating than Stiff.
If Bill Bryson were to apprentice at a funeral home, searching for the meaning of life and death, you’d have Curtains. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
Tom Jokinen is a radio producer and video-journalist who has worked on Morningside, Counterspin with Avi Lewis and Definitely Not the Opera as well as many other CBC shows. In 2006 he took a job as an apprentice undertaker at a Winnipeg funeral home. He has also worked as a railroad operator, an editorial cartoonist and spent two years in medical school at the University of Toronto. He dropped out, but not before dissecting two human cadavers. He and his wife live in Ottawa, Canada. (From the publisher.)
Book Reviews
A CBC journalist in Winnepeg taking "a month's leave to dabble in deathcare" reveals the changing face of the funeral industry in this informative but rote tour of duty, an update of sorts on Jessica Mitford's 1963 The American Way of Death. On his first day as an intern at the Winnepeg crematorium run by Neil Bardal, the undertaker tells him that "the traditional funeral is gone and it's never coming back"; the bereft world has embraced cremation, with specific impact on a number of industry segments, from vehicles and florists to tombstones and caskets. Jokinen is nonchalantly graphic when getting into the day-to-day of cremation ("I dump the pan of bones onto the steel table and crunch through it with the heavy magnet"), touching on juvenile at times, but makes the point in many ways that, eventually, we'll all be paying for this industry's changes. The industry's big bet is that 75 million North American baby boomers, afraid of death, will want unprecedented control over their funerals, illustrated in examples like a successful Milwaukee funeral home owner who calls Ritz-Carlton and Disney his models. Readers who understand that Jokinen took on the role of apprentice undertaker for one reason (they're reading it) will find an interesting glimpse into an almost-invisible industry, and the forces pushing it in strange new directions.
Publishers Weekly
Jokinen gathered material for this by taking a month off his Winnipeg journalist job (go Blue Bombers!!) to intern as an undertaker. Though it shares similarities with Mary Roach's Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, this also details what it's like to be on the other end of the business. The result is a readable, dare I say enjoyable, behind-the-scenes look at what actually happens to your body at the end.... I found the educative streak here exemplary of the best kinds of DIY materials and was surprised to find out that a cremation is significantly cheaper than a funeral.... Thus, the dickering scene in The Big Lebowski where Walter is haggling over the cost of the receptacle isn't tacky, it's a harbinger. A great read. —Douglas Lord, "Books for Dudes", Booksmack!
Library Journal
Jokinen’s wry observations on and revelations about mortality and the industry it has engendered evoke a youthful adventure into the unknown—not only the philosophical mystery of death but also the “black hole” between the last breath and the reappearance at funeral or cemetery.... Recounting his experiences, he delivers ironic dialogue with stand-up skill and smoothly integrates technical information...and market data...without hindering the flow of readable insights. —Whitney Scott
Booklist
In this report on the modern funeral industry, Jokinen updates The American Way of Death, Jessica Mitford’s classic 1963 treatise on the subject…An astute, measured look at the modern death-care industry.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for Curtains:
1. Talk about Tom Jokinen's decision to take a break from his full-time job and become an apprentice in undertaking. What possessed to him to do so...and why that specific field? What do you think of the decision? Had it had been your spouse, would you have supported the move?
2. Do you find the book's specific descriptions of preparing the body—including cremation and embalming, as well as makeup and dressing—grisly, interesting, humorous?
3. Speaking of humor, locate some of the book's funnier passages. What makes them funny? Do you find the humor disrespectful toward a serious, often tragic subject? Is it macabre? Or do you find it refreshingly irreverent?
4. Jokinen says at one point. "We're all roughly equal...200 cubic inches, or 5 pounds, of mineral powder, mostly calcium phosphate...." How does that statement make you feel? In what way does it reflect a deeper philosophical view about the meaning of life? Are we all the same? Is that what our lives ultimately boil down to (excuse the metaphor)?
5. Talk about the differences Jokinen finds between the undertaking profession...and the funeral industry. Why the disconnect? Were you outraged by some of the industry practices Jokinen wrote about? If so, what in particular?
6. Neil Bardal tells the author that "the traditional funeral is gone, and it's never coming back." How are cremation and other practices changing the industry? What are some of the newer trends? How do Jokinen and others see the grief business in the future, especially as baby-boomers age?
7. Speaking of cremation, why are more people choosing it over the traditional casket? What about you—what are your desires?
8. Overall, as he came away from his time in the funeral business, what was Jokinen's attitude? What is yours...after having read his book?
9. What (if any) are your own personal experiences in organizing a funeral and making the choices one has to make at a very difficult time?
10. What functions do funerals serve? Why do we have them? Are they purely religious sacraments...or something more?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)