Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
Ratings41
Average rating3.9
The irresistible, ever-curious, and always best-selling Mary Roach returns with a new adventure to the invisible realm we carry around inside.
“America’s funniest science writer” (Washington Post) takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour. The alimentary canal is classic Mary Roach terrain: the questions explored in Gulp are as taboo, in their way, as the cadavers in Stiff and every bit as surreal as the universe of zero gravity explored in Packing for Mars. Why is crunchy food so appealing? Why is it so hard to find words for flavors and smells? Why doesn’t the stomach digest itself? How much can you eat before your stomach bursts? Can constipation kill you? Did it kill Elvis? In Gulp we meet scientists who tackle the questions no one else thinks of―or has the courage to ask. We go on location to a pet-food taste-test lab, a fecal transplant, and into a live stomach to observe the fate of a meal. With Roach at our side, we travel the world, meeting murderers and mad scientists, Eskimos and exorcists (who have occasionally administered holy water rectally), rabbis and terrorists―who, it turns out, for practical reasons do not conceal bombs in their digestive tracts.
Like all of Roach’s books, Gulp is as much about human beings as it is about human bodies.
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I think Mary Roach is a fabulous science writer who makes her subject matter informative, interesting and fun. I wanted to read this book because of my own digestive problems and for that it was worth it. A lot of it was TMI for me so I just skipped over those parts.
This is Mary Roach at her best, with all of her classic points: a one-word, evocative, title a subject matter dancing just on the edge of the taboo line, dealt with in one part investigative journalism, one part completely unsquashable curiosity and one part a mix of stream-of-consciousness and “I just can't help but share” anecdotes.
Those who disliked Roach's previous works will hate Gulp, and those who liked her previous works will love it. The dislike largely stems from her highly present narration, and that is out in full force here. Doctors that she has known with hilariously apropos names, completely tangential stuff she found while doing research, boilerplate responses from Oster regarding an e-mail inquiry about their blenders being used for fecal transplate and much, much more abound in the frequent footnotes (average density seems to be about 1.5 footnotes/page.) New sections are usually introduced with commentary about what made Roach reach out to this particular person and how she feels on meeting them. The narration in fact is so present in Gulp, even compared to her previous works, that honestly, it skirts memoir territory. I consider that a win, your mileage may vary, as they say.
Meanwhile, Roach again makes the lowest of lowbrow topics palatable (sorry – couldn't resist!) if not downright classy. For a book with an entire chapter on flatulence, it's entertaining, funny and interesting even to those of us who wouldn't dream of laughing at a fart joke. You didn't know that you wanted to know why some animals eat their own feces, the history of gastrocutaneous fistulas, the science of the chemical composition of farts, or what human tasters think of cat food and why, but Roach's curiosity is contagious and she can make any subject matter fascinating.
Though I feel like the end sort of petered out rather than wrapping things up, I think this is a great book - the one that since-disappointed lovers of Stiff have been waiting for, or close to it.
