'Gory Details' delights with weird and icky

Science writer Erika Engelhaupt’s upcoming book, “Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science,” (March 2) is a delightful travelogue through the morbid, creepy, taboo, icky and weird facts about ourselves and our world.

Engelhaupt’s background is in both science and journalism. She completed two graduate degrees in science and has worked as an editor, writer, blogger and storyteller (on NPR and on stage).

“Gory Details” grew out of her online column by the same name for National Geographic magazine.

Engelhaupt’s style is much like science writer Mary Roach’s, combining fascinating fact, compelling descriptions and humor. She includes self-deprecating anecdotes, such as the time she inadvertently caused a plague of flies in her own home.

The book covers the disturbing, such as death and the microbiology of decay; the taboo, such as female anatomy and necrophilia; the icky, including maggot farms and body fluids; and the weird, including miniature crime scenes and brain differences found in psychopaths and those with misophonia.

Despite her formal education, Engelhaupt’s book is not a dry science tome. With a journalist’s natural curiosity, she investigates topics that many people wonder about but are not part of our common knowledge or addressed in public education.

However, she does know how to find the top experts to answer her (and our) questions. She travels to a body farm to learn about how the human body decomposes; she goes to a maggot farm to find out where the world is turning to feed livestock; and she finds a lab where she can extract and see the mites that live on her (and everyone’s) face.

Engelhaupt also addresses common urban legends and misconceptions. With her, we learn that our loyal dog is much more likely to dine on our dead body than our aloof cat is. Also, doggo’s mouth is not cleaner than our own. In fact, canine mouths contain about 500 species of bacteria, most of which do not live in the human microbiome, so we have no immunity to them. In rare cases, Fluffy’s kiss can result in a coma or death for the object of his devotion.

I am not particularly squeamish about violence and gore in books. My favorite genres include murder mysteries and true crime. However, when I saw that the first part of the book includes chapters with descriptions like “Morbid curiosity and the morgue” and “When microbes turn the tables on us,” I was worried I might have an existential crisis before I was finished reading it.

However, Engelhaupt’s voice is so casual and readable and her tone is so informal, I found that the topics, well not fascinating, but they were interesting and entertaining. No panic attacks or trips to the psych ER.

Above all, Engelhaupt is a storyteller, and “Gory Details” is a fun, informative read. Whether you read it straight through in just a few sittings, or read a few chapters between other books that you’re into, I recommend you don’t read it at mealtime. 

Irony dominates 'The Bad Muslim Discount'

One of life’s ironies is that even when we do what’s right and what’s expected of us, our actions can still unintentionally result in tragedy. In his debut novel for adult audiences “The Bad Muslim Discount,” due out Feb. 2, author Syed Masood tells an irony-rich story through two powerful voices, Anvar and Azza.

Anvar, a Pakistani teen, migrates to California with his family when his father becomes fed up with the growing religious fundamentalism in 1995 Karachi. Something of the family’s bad apple, Anvar is smart, sassy, and somewhat lazy. His brother Aamir is the sober, adult-pleasing “good Muslim” of the family, if only while someone is looking so he can get credit for it.

The story’s other narrator, Azza, is a Bagdad teen whose mother dies of cancer and father is disappeared and tortured by the Americans. Eventually, her father returns, with the physical and psychological scars of his ordeal. Azza makes a secret deal with neighbor Qais—and pays a price for it—who obtains forged passports for the three of them and they migrate to California.

Now adults, Anvar and Azza cross paths. A disillusioned lawyer, and still a bad Muslim, Anvar tries to help Azza, who endures physical abuse and the threat of sexual abuse.

The action in the novel is fast paced, from the war-torn Middle East where the characters’ lives are threatened, to post-9/11 San Francisco, where the characters face racism and Islamophobia. The characters are realistic and endearing. Even Aamir, the goody-goody, has the reader’s sympathy when he becomes engaged to a woman whom he doesn’t know is his brother’s ex-lover.

The story is full of entertaining secondary characters like Anvar’s grandmother, who teaches him about checkers and about life; Anvar’s pious and dictatorial mother; his father, who loves music and punishes Anvar’s misdeeds my making him eat bubble gum ice cream, his least favorite flavor; and Hafeez Bhatti, his paan-chewing landlord, who gives Anvar the good Muslim discount on a shabby apartment.

The prose is compelling and lyrical at times, such as the description of Anvar’s hometown:

Karachi, the city that spat me out into this world, is perpetually under siege by its own climate. The Indian Ocean does not sit placidly at the edge of the massive metropolitan port. It invades. It pours in through the air. It conspires with the dense smog of modern life and collective breath of fifteen million souls to oppress you. Under the gaze of an indifferent sun you sweat and the world sweats with you (page 5).

The author’s insight about religion and geopolitical issues is both spot on and witty. To prepare the reader for a rather disturbing description of the sacrifice of a goat to celebrate Eid, Masood says, “Yes, Islam has a marketing problem” (page 3). And later, Anvar observes, “That radical Islamists and ‘America First’ nationalists had essentially the same worldview and the same desire to recapture a nostalgia-gilded past glory was proof, in my opinion, that God’s sense of irony was simply divine” (pages 181-182).

It’s the irony that dominates this novel. Aamir, the good Muslim, who attends mosque, prays five times a day, doesn’t drink or smoke, and becomes engaged to the woman his parents choose for him, inadvertently causes a man’s death, even though he only did what a good Muslim would. Anvar, the bad Muslim, does what he wants, drinks, smokes, sleeps with women, and never prays. When he finally does follow an ethical code—for attorneys, not for Muslims—the result is more pain for his friends.

I enjoyed the novel and found it a rewarding read that reminded me of other excellent recent works, such as Fatima Farheen Mirza’s “A Place for Us” and “The House of Broken Angels” by Luis Alberto Urrea.

The characters are complex and sympathetic. The story includes tense moments and the serious portrayal of the violence the characters endure, but also humorous passages about human flaws and the small tensions that occur in families.

The book’s one flaw is that the author’s theme statements are a bit ham-fisted and seem more appropriate for a Young Adult novel. However, this blemish does not diminish the reader’s enjoyment of this rich and complex story.