BOOK 146: GULP: ADVENTURES ON THE
ALIMENTARY CANAL: MARY ROACH
Mary Roach’s investigations into
weird body science were inspired by a plastic torso with removable organs in
her fifth-grade class, “the point at which curiosity began to push aside
disgust or fear or whatever it is that so reliably deflects mind from body.”
Since then, she’s investigated death (Stiff), sex (Bonk), life after death
(Spooked), and life in zero-gravity (Packing for Mars). Now, she cruises down
the alimentary canal with Gulp. As you’d expect with Roach, this isn’t a
methodical top-to-bottom tour. It’s more delightful and memorable than that.
She’s a gorgeous writer, a master of sly asides, puns, and the bizarre but
ultimately relevant story, sounding at times like an absurdly well-informed
comedian (her footnotes are must-reads). And her evocative portraits of experts
obsessed with their piece of the digestive puzzle--the surprising properties of
saliva, nuances of chewing and digesting, and, yes, the incredible control of
the colon--coaxes her readers beyond the gag reflex, inspiring awe for the
world inside ourselves. --Mari Malcolm --This text refers to the Hardcover
edition.
MY VERDICT: I’m a huge fan of Mary
Roach, I don’t often read multiple books by the same author but I’ve read three
of Roach’s forays into weird science and wonderful anecdotes. Stiff, the first and my favourite book
by her, examines what happens to our bodies after we die. It’s as morbid and
fascinating as it sounds and wonderfully written.
This book has the usual Roach
charm. She breezily makes even the most disgusting
facts and stories palatable (her puns are much better than mine.) Her writing
appears so effortlessly brilliant that even hard medical terms and concepts are
simple to digest (oh god, these puns are catching!) A lot of the time some of
these stories would be hard going but I sped through this book in wonder.
Her curiosity is contagious and you
can’t help but be taken on a journey through laboratories, hospitals and
cafeterias and meeting fascinating characters along the way. And the characters
are wonderful, conducting studies where many a person would fear to tread, into
the specialist medical fields of anything from spit to natural gases. You feel
like a fly on the wall for many of these experiments. Things that you couldn’t imagine
are being experimented on all over the world. (I’m just glad I wasn’t there in
person as a lot of them seem quite smelly). And they ask and answer questions
you never knew you wanted to ask (like why do rats eat their faeces and how big
was Elvis’ colon?)
An entertaining read but also an
interesting opportunity to look at your body and wonder at the awesome things
it can do and how much you take its functions for granted when everything is
going fine.
