Boo, Mary Roach. Boo. (See what I did there? Heckling the author of a 'ghost book' with the quintessentially 'ghost' phrase. 'Cause I'm witty...)

This book bored me beginning to end, with a few brief sections that elicited some small level of interest. To be fair, all things ghosty...probably not my favorite topic to begin with. But I have read other Roach works ("Stiff") and love her accessible, humorous, and informative style. Or, I should say, LOVED her style. Maybe I just didn't love the particular angles she chose to approach the topic. I hoped (in vain) that perhaps "Spook" is one of Roach's earlier books and she just hadn't found her voice yet. But at the end of the day, too much of this book read like a bad student paper--unsuccessfully grasping for something new or interesting, while regurgitating the anecdotes and studies of others with little to no meaningful analysis.

I recommend to friends that they should read anything by Mary Roach (and Malcolm Gladwell but that's another story) and have been quoting from this book a lot since reading it. This book explores the history of how science has been used to investigate or explain "spiritual" phenomenon such as reincarnation, mediums communicating with the dead, near-death experiences, where the soul lives in the body or when it enters the body for that matter. Very interesting. Aristotle did experiments with semen which he believed a whole and complete person lived in somewhere and that the egg produced by women was just nourishment for growing that person but the debate was when did the soul enter the body. An early Jewish doctor claimed to have found an indestructible bone that the soul lived in that until more modern anatomy practices were developed was proved never to have existed. A current experiment on haunted places in London proposes that those queer feelings one feels (chills, tingling skin, queasiness) may in fact be infra-sounds or sound vibrations that we can't hear but rather feel. Roach even investigates an actual court case in which the son of a deceased farmer claimed to have been visited by the ghost of his father who pointed him in the direction of a new will he had written that equally divided his property between all his sons not just the one who had inherited everything. She employees a handwriting expert on the two wills and makes an interesting discovery. And poor mediums in the late 1800s were subjected to some really crazy experiments to determine if they were authentic.

Not as quirky or entertaining as Stiff, unfortunately.

Nonfiction can go a bunch of different ways, and this book was done well but not for me. The author does an approachable and thorough job of investigating differing opinions, research, and angles to the topic of life after death, yet I wanted a lot more of the detail and human level. Even when she interviews someone firsthand, it's generally brief and with a professional level of distance. Only in her own narration do her other thoughts come out (more on that in a moment). It's not fair to say it's too surface-level on a topic, because that's not true... More accurately, she touches on each topic from such a data-informed lens that I found myself wanting more of the basic "what do most regular people think?" analysis. For my preferences, it never fully hooked me, and I got bored at times. It's also possible that this topic doesn't interest me as much as I originally assumed, though I did enjoy the discussion of near-death experiences, India's strong views on reincarnation in children, and the history of paranormal mediums.

Who is Mary Roach? Why does she have such an interest in these topics and in this way? From this book alone, I couldn't figure her out exactly. She's clearly smart, curious, and very funny, but I never understood on what authority I should take her observations. Also, the irreverent humor worked most of the time, but it did feel icky (at the beginning especially) when it ventured closer to one-sided teasing. Again, I'm sure this comes down to personal preference.

All considered, I think this book is pretty good and definitely does what it tries to do. I only wish I got more human experience out of it besides the very last line of the book.

Strong content warnings for suicide, animal abuse (graphic & frequent), medical content, and some gross body stuff.

From reviews or the blurb of this book or something, I had got the impression that Mary Roach's investigation into scientific proof for the afterlife had resulted in her changing her skeptical stance on proof of life after death. It doesn't - she maintains her skeptical/open minded stance throughout. I think Spook would be enlightening if you were really wondering about the veracity of mediums and so on. For me, the appeal was Mary Roach's hysterical writing style (particularly her asides and footnotes) - this is a really embarrassing book to read on public transport.

3.5 stars rounded up: "Simply put, this is a book for people who would like very much to believe in a soul and in an afterlife for it to hang around in, but who have trouble accepting these things on faith. ... If you found this book in the New Age section of your local bookstore, it is grossly misshelved, and you should put it down at once."

Vintage Roach.