A Tour of Bones: Facing Fear and Looking for Life

by Denise Inge

A life-enhancing exploration of how to live well in the face of mortality.Author, academic and adventurer Denise Inge grew up in a large and rambunctious family on the east coast of America. She crossed the Sahara, charmed snakes in Marrakech and cycled the Adirondack mountains but her latest adventure is an interior one. It starts with the discovery that her house is built on a crypt full of human skeletons.Facing her fear of these strangers' bones takes her to other charnel houses in Europe and on a journey into the meaning of bones themselves. This exploration, though it began before her diagnosis with an inoperable sarcoma, takes on a new significance when the question of living well in the face of mortality abruptly ceases to be hypothetical. A Tour of Bones is a passionate testament to the conviction that living is more than not dying, and that contemplating mortality is not about being prepared to die but about being prepared to live.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Death, Travel, History, Biography, Philosophy

216 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Facing a basement full of bones and later a diagnosis of inoperable sarcoma, Inge toured some of Europe’s notable charnel houses, pondering what remains of us after life and how to approach death with humility and awe. This splendid posthumous book – a true memento mori but, more importantly, a timeless celebration of human vitality and collective memory – will long outlast the author’s too-short life. I cannot recommend it highly enough.

See my full review at The Bookbag.

[Patricia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Although the premise may seem macabre, the author wanted to visit places where human bones are stored as a way of making some sense of life. And I think she succeeded. I found out about the places of Czermna, Hallstatt, Sedlec and Naters, and the different ways that human bones are kept. Perhaps most touching are the bones in Hallstatt, where skulls are painted with flowers or other embellishments and the name of the person. As the author says on page 127: "When we treat human remains with respect, particularly when we treat them with respect regardless of their rank, virtue or valour, we treat ourselves with respect, for in so doing we say that humanity is one family..." This book is one woman's meditation on the meaning of life, and I profited from reading it.

[Penny · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
I feel a bit guilty that I didn't like this more than I actually did, especially as the book is made extra poignant by the author's early death this year.
I really enjoyed the travel writing side of it.
I struggled with the meditations on life and death. Fine for a chapter or two, but then it all got a bit too much and I felt I needed some fresh air! It all got a bit suffocating - surely there can be too much pondering, contemplating and wondering!
Maybe it would have meant more to someone who has religious beliefs.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating discussion of what happens when we die and we are reduced to bones only. She visits charnel houses over Europe and looks at various ways of being buried. Along the way she discusses how the 20th and 21st century has sanitised death. How language has been wiped clean of any references to death and the dreadfulness of the exploitative funeral business. It is a book about 'facing fear and looking for life.'
Three stages of anxiety in Western Civilisation.
1. Ancient World: Anxiety about our Fate
2. Medieval World: Anxiety concerning guilt and condemnation
3. Modern Age: our anxiety about meaninglessness.
Questions to ask in the face of Death:
1. Are the broken parts of your deep self being healed?
Get rid of the bitterness, mend the bridges, seek and receive forgiveness. Let yourself be loved.
2. Have you found a lasting hope?
Anchor yourself in the eternal and abiding. Feed yourself something stronger than optimism.
You are in a constant state of growth and transition, so let change transform you.
3. What are the things for which you will be remembered?
Cut the crap in your life. Do the things that matter. Find and exercise your gifts.
4. Are you on a path of true humility?
Submit to a truth that is bigger than yourself. Become part of it. Let it be your story.
Preparing to live and preparing to die are in the end the same thing.
Inge started this journey and writing this after a cancer diagnosis. The book ends with her reconciling to the idea of our reduction to bones. And then I read on the back page of what eventually happened to her and was quite sad. Really worth reading for your own self examination.

[Michael Bully · Rating 2 out of 5]

I so wanted to like this book after all the glowing reviews. Fascinating subject, Ms Inge, an American lady who married an English chap who became bishop of Worcester. Found that their house in Worcester (England) was built over a centuries old charnel house ( sometimes called an ossuary where bones and skulls were placed). Ms. Inge was also very ill with cancer whilst writing the book and died in 2014. But not before she embarked on a European tour taking in charnel houses at Czorma ( Poland), Sedlec ( Czech Republic), Hallstatt (Austria) and Naters ( Switzerland) Not sure why these were chosen and the famous Douaumont Ossuary ( with the skulls and bones of soldiersfrom the battle of Verdun) was overlooked.

Interesting observations and descriptions are shared in book of these four sites. But I was hoping for some wider historical and cultural analyses. Does living in a neighbourhood centred around a charnel house change local attitudes towards death? Did the Reformation make a difference towards charnel houses- particularly as countries which became Protestant largely lost their belief in Purgatory? What about cultural representation of The Dead after the Black Death or the 17th century plagues or the aftermath of Warfare, and the connection with charnel house construction ?

The book ends with advice such as “Are the broken parts of your deep self being healed?” along with “Cut the crap in your life.” Hmm okay.

[Finn · Rating 3 out of 5]

- i wanted to love this book.
- i couldn't.
- was more about the author's journey (which is admirable and fantastic)
- wasn't looking for a book on author's journey
-author died post release of book which made me feel like a little sh*t for not finishing it out of respect.

[Laura Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

SPOILER ALERT:

This is so much more than just a travel book about the author's visit to four European ossuaries. This journey was prompted by her desire to confront her fear of mortality and she gleaned a lot of lessons from visiting these bone yards. I found her revelations fascinating. I also truly enjoyed her discussion about how the Western concept of resurrection has evolved over time.

It was rather odd to read this book with the full knowledge that the author wound up dying of the cancer she mentions during the introduction of the book. It made her revelations more poignant.

[Andi · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this beautifully written book, you are encouraged to journey with the reader as she faces the fear of death, and ponders questions about life, legacy, and what it means to live and ultimately die.

[Bradley Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inge spent her whole life as an adventurer. So when the time came to get married and get settled down, the adventures still continued. After she married her husband, a bishop in the Church of England, they were told their future home in Worcester housed an ossuary; a bone house. Joined with some friends one night, Inge explored the catacombs beneath her basement. As she gazed upon the piles of human bones, something clicked inside of her. When Inge would be diagnosed with an inoperable sarcoma, she set out to find and tour the most peculiar and interesting ossuaries across Europe. During her journey, Inge would discover the humility of life and beauty of death.

What sounds like a very chilling book actually turns out to be a very enlightening and existential read. The reason why the book sounds so macabre is that people do not like to talk about death or even accept that is exists. Traveling across Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Swiss Alps, Inge's search for self becomes a search for the heart of humanity. Facing death herself, Inge learns that the path to understanding mortality is that one must prepare to live as opposed to preparing to die.

Inge would pass away on Easter Sunday in 2014. The book was published posthumously. Inge was humbled seeing these remains and realizing that regardless of race or creed, we will all have the same fate. Her book is meant to serve as a comforting reminder to embrace life and not be afraid of death. To treat people with humility and respect is the key to a life well lived.

[Massanutten Regional Library · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alice, North River patron, July 2016, 5 stars:

How distressing it is to discover a vibrant, original voice only to learn from the introduction to the book you are reading that the owner of the lovely voice has undergone chemotherapy—especially when her book is a meditation on mortality. Denise Inge set out to confront her fear of death, starting with entering the ossuary, or “bonehouse,” underlying the home she moved into when her husband became bishop of Worcester. Not having read any reviews of this extraordinary volume. I anticipated enjoying a bit of an antiquarian tour with elements of travel writing as well as reflection, but when I read about the cancer treatments, I put down the book and googled the author, only to learn that she died in May 2014, six months before it was published. In the few pages I’d already read, Inge was so very alive that I immediately felt a sense of loss, which gave special weight to the beautifully written book. What a stylist Inge was, bringing to life the people and places she wrote about in her short tour of European charnel houses, and how thoughtfully she engaged with the experiences and sights of her unorthodox travel project! The book’s greatest strength is Inge’s willingness to confront mortality and our uneasy relationship with the future that awaits us all. Ultimately she shows readers the crucial importance of fully living in the moments we have.

[Kathy Riley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Denise Inge. A Tour of Bones: facing fear and looking for life. (Bloomsbury 2015)I must admit the subtitle gave me the courage to approach this book, a memoir interwoven with a remarkable travel account. The late Denise Inge was a scholar and wife of an Anglican bishop, whose assignment brought his family to an ancient house in Worcester, England. It was also unique in that the cellar contained a charnal house—a vault containing human skeletal remains. Finding her thoughts turning more and more to the “brevity of life and longevity of bones”, Inge sets off on journey with a translator friend, visiting 4 other European charnal houses and the people who maintain them. All fears trace back to the fear of death, Inge believes, and she wants to transform her fears, a necessity if life is to be truly lived. With her beautiful writing, she takes us with her, and like her, I felt my fears begin to merge into “wonder and reverence.” The questions that remain for her are all about living. This book is indeed a gem, as Alexander McCall Smith writes in his endorsement, a “constantly engaging reflection on life and mortality,” infused with love.

[Debra Lilly · Rating 4 out of 5]

My husband heard about this book from an interview with the author on NPR. She lived/s in a house in England with a charnel house - an ossuary, a place where bones from the graveyard are moved to make way for more burials - in her basement. To deal with that, she went on a tour of charnel houses in Europe. Somewhere in the process of writing the book, she also learned that she had cancer. So the intensity level ... well.

The book takes a deep look at bones and death, and how we live our lives in the face of them. I underlined more in this book than in any since college, maybe. So many really thoughtful ideas. I am particularly intrigued by the idea of woodland burials - no embalming, just simple burial and "dust to dust." Here's a summary: "What I have been surprised to discover, as these questions chase and wash over me, is that preparing to live and preparing to die are in the end the same thing."

[Frances · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched and full of well-chosen vocabulary, Inge explores four bone houses (ossuary/Beinhaus) in Europe in an attempt to become more comfortable with the charnel house her own family lives above in Worcester, England . Each house has its own question to ask her: Are the broken parts of your deep self being healed? Have you found a lasting hope? What are the things for which you will be remembered? Are you on a path of true humility? In contemplating these questions, Inge concludes "that preparing to live and preparing to die are in the end the same thing." Most of her writing of this book, facing her fear of death, was done before her inoperable cancer diagnosis. She died just after she finished it but before it was published.

[Brittneybook Book · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautifully written book about the writer's encounter with four different burial sites. At each place, she relates her experience there with a story from her life, and intertwines it with nature, spiritual enquiring, and how we should better live.

Inge displayed a brilliant ability to take us deeply into the physical human body, as well as the soul. And what better way to do it, than with bones? At the end, she asks us to ask ourselves these questions : 1. Are the broken parts of your deep self being healed? 2. Have you found a lasting hope? 3. What are the things for which you will be remembered? and 4. Are you on a path of true humility? This life is an adventure!

[Amanda Dodge · Rating 1 out of 5]

I enjoyed the concept of this book, and there were some really informative parts -- like the history of skull cups and background on how each of the charnel houses was formed and rediscovered -- but it rambles quite a bit. There would be a 2-3 page introspective dive into the essence of hope, a light paragraph about boarding a train, and then another five pages about theories based around heaven. Admittedly, I didn't finish it. It was too heavy sometimes and I was left overwhelmed and exhausted.

[Robin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author goes off on some rabbit trails and gets long winded in descriptions of places. Some of that added to the story she was trying to tell, a lot of it did not.
Maybe it was just the timing of reading this book for me, but I needed a box of tissues while reading A Tour of Bones. She asks compelling questions, and imparts bits of wisdom throughout the book.
Thought provoking, deep, great mental imagery. Not a light-hearted read.

[Felicity Prescott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautifully written book is a study of the glory of life lived within the shocking inevitability of imminent death. Denise writes with delight about the extraordinary adventure which is her life, skillfully weaving her hopes, fears and faith in Christ with refreshing honesty. As I read I find I am smiling, laughing, weeping and rejoicing with gratitude for this gift of a book.

[Lorraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A memoir of Denise Inge's search to understand mortality through traveling to several different charnel houses. She is insightful and raises many profound questions for the reader to reflect on.

[Alissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF: naval-gazing non sequitur musings about death and whatever else occurs to the author throughout. Got through the various charnel house chapters then had to quit.

[Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

A meditation on mortality written not long before the author's death. Clear-eyed and approachable.