Visiting a variety of charnel houses, repositories of human bones located throughout the world, is not the way one usually spends a holiday, but Denise Inge (Wanting Like a God) had a special reason to visit four ossuaries: she lived on top of one in England. Knowing her house was situated over a room full of human bones, coupled with a diagnosis of inoperable cancer, prompted Inge to rethink her views on death and dying, and to face her fear of the dead, her fear of the unknown that lies ahead.
Although the idea of charnel houses might appear ghoulish, the deliberateness in preserving these human remains can change one's perspective, as Inge discovered in her travels. In the Skull Chapel in Czermna, where the skulls and bones of Germans, Czechs, Poles and Silesians lie together, "the vanquished and the victors laid side by side regardless of race or station... skulls alone are stacked floor to ceiling, each jawless chin seeming to devour the ash-white cranium on which it rests." Inge could still sense the antagonism these enemies felt toward one another in life. In Sedlec, she discovered chalices and chandeliers built out of bones; in Hallstatt, sun-bleached skulls were lovingly hand painted; in Naters, Inge juxtaposes the beauty of the Alps against the macabre. Each visit altered Inge's own feelings toward life and death further, leaving readers with a deep sense of the wonder of them both. --Lee E. Cart, freelance writer and book reviewer