Review: "Replaceable You" by Mary Roach

Replaceable You by Mary Roach
Published September 2025 via W.W. Norton & Company
★★★★

There are not all that many authors whose books can make me say out loud, under my breath, "oh no" while I'm walking down the street with my nose buried in my e-reader. (The bit about the drill and the cornea, if you're wondering.) And there are not all that many authors whose books infiltrate my dreams (...butt creases). And yet Replaceable You managed to do both, which is honestly on par for Roach's books. Also on par: I had to switch to reading something else several times over meals, because Roach delights in the occasional ick factor. It's all fascinating, so I'm not really complaining, but...you have been warned.

Roach writes pop science books, and in Replaceable You she turns her gaze to transplants, artificial replacements, and...well, some of the weirder things involved in both. I love weird medical things (museums of medical oddities are my absolute favorites), and this touches on a number of topics that I've long found intriguing—osseointegration prosthetics, iron lungs, etc. (Truly, rarely have I felt so jealous of an author as when Roach talks about having had the opportunity to spend the night in an iron lung.)

I would happily have read full books about many of the independent medical advances (and sometimes fails) that Roach describes here—heck, I have read full books about a number of these things. But Roach provides a marvellous jumping-off point for curiosity, plus a high number of asides that make it clear just how much she loves the sort of research that she gets to do in writing these books.

Take this (square brackets and ellipses original to the book): Here is onetime army surgeon Frank Tetamore describing one such invention—his own—in an 1894 paper: "These artificial noses are made of a very light plastic material. . . . They are secured on the face by bow spectacles made especially for the purpose." To obscure the lower border of the prosthesis, "a mustache [was] fastened to the nose piece." Forty years before novelty companies began selling Groucho Marx glasses, Frank Tetamore had invented a medical version. (loc. 122*)

Or this: Department of ghastly but true sentences: The chain saw got its start in the delivery room. (loc.1195)

Or this, for that matter: The current decade has seen a Mr. Potato Head Goes Green, made from plant-based plastic, a gender-neutral Potato Head set, and a low-carb Mr. Potato Head one-third the size of the original. Only one of those I made up. (loc. 2560)

You can't beat that energy. Highly recommended to anyone interested in science, playful snark, and medical specificity.

*Quotes are from an ARC and may not be final.

Thanks to the author and publisher for providing a review copy through NetGalley.