Non-fiction: SPOOK

THE BARE FACTS

Title: Spook, Science Tackles The Afterlife
Authors: Mary Roach
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Date of Publication: 2005
Pages: 311
Grade That Means Nothing Coming From Me: B+

SO BASICALLY, IT’S ABOUT
One female journalist’s quest to prove what happens after you die.

WHY’D YOU WANNA READ THAT?
I was originally interested in her other book, Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, because it freaked me out. Somehow, this one wound up on my wishlist and I got it for my birthday.

AND HOW’D THAT WORK OUT FOR YOU?
Well. It was a really enjoyable read. She introduces the book by explaining her Catholic background and her inability to take the afterlife on faith. She believes in science, but recognizes its fallibility.

Roach then glides right into her adventure that took her all over the world to find out the truth about the afterlife. She realized that the closer you are to someone, the more likely you are to believe in his side of things. The same goes for culture.

In Kamalpur, where the villages are small and the belief in reincarnation is big, it’s completely acceptable and almost the norm to have children speak of past lives and their parents to connect these lives with villagers already living them. In places where reincarnation is not what’s taught from an early age, children don’t speak of the after/beforelife in the same way.

If you were Duncan Macdougall you’d see death as an “opportunity” and weigh the soul at the moment of death (Roach goes into a very amusing explanation on how he accomplished this) to prove its existence. According to his published work, the soul is 21 grams. The Journal of American Medicine (circa 1907) believed him, but Roach isn’t so sure-- she and many others found him to be a possible “nutter.”

If you’re a cardiologist, you may have seen near-death experiences first hand—according to Roach, cardiologists’ papers are among the most widely read. And, if you’re Professor Bruce Greyson of the University of Virginia’s Department of Psychiatric Medicine and spent the last 29 years hearing about death, you’d be intrigued by patients’ almost universal near-death experiences and set up a camera in an operating room to prove what people are saying. He learned from the cardiologists that interviews can be fabricated and is trying to rely on a computer but is facing bureaucratic hurdles with his work. So, the jury’s still out on that one.

Roach goes to great lengths in the name of science. She attempts to communicate with the dead directly by going to medium school. She signs up as a human lab rat and goes inside an electromagnetic field box in the middle of the night. (The theory is that electromagnetic fields cause some people to see spirit-like apparitions, not true in Roach’s case.) And she dives into the law books to examine the case of Lester’s North Carolina family battle over a will: the deceased came back and told the family of its secret location.

Roach struggles in the end to answer her own questions, but that’s not really why you’re reading Spook. It’s for her well-written descriptions, her funny wit, and her adventure and embarrassment of pulling out archived ectoplasm in the middle of an otherwise serene Cambridge University library reading room.

SHOULD I READ THIS?
If you’re interested in the afterlife and are a person who enjoys the ride more than the destination, this is the book for you.

Brandi Larsen is the editor of BookADay.