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Boy of Bone: Twelve Stories Inspired by the Mutter Museum
In this extraordinary narrative and visual collection, twelve stories are crafted out of the imagined lives of actual people. Each story is inspired by an exhibit at the Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, a place of "terrible beauty" (Newsweek) that is "gorgeous and repulsive at once" (The New Yorker).
- GenresFiction
207 pages, Hardcover
First published December 14, 2011
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 13, 2013
Her Dark Materials *
If a collection of short stories “inspired by the mütter museum” strikes you as something that would lean inexorably toward the morbid and gory – the stuff of campfire ghost stories and Halloween horror tales – you’d be half right. While the twelve tales found in Boy of Bone are at turns gruesome and macabre (at times intimately so), author K.R. Sands exhibits great empathy and compassion for her subjects, despite having only conversed with them in her imagination. The result is a collection of fictional stories, inspired by real people and events, that manages to imbue “mere” museum displays – objects and artifacts - with a touching dose of humanity.
Through Sands, some of the “dead voices” who inhabit the Mütter Museum are given the means to speak, to tell us their stories, filled as they are with pain, grief, sadness, suffering – and, joy, peace, and divinity as well. From a man mourning the loss of his conjoined twin (“The Pump Twin”) to a scientist who has fallen “in love” with one of his own medical devices (“The Face Phantom”), the characters you meet within these pages will not soon be forgotten.
While it’s difficult to pick and choose favorites, I especially enjoyed:
* “Madame Sunday’s Horn” (a woman comes to accept and even embrace the unicorn horn growing from her forehead as a sign of god’s grace);
* “What Is Written, Sweet Sister?” (a young Union nurse requests the skin of her deceased soldier brother, so that it might be used to bind a prized family volume – not a Bible, but a book of Poe!); and
* “Boy of Bone” (the sister of a boy – long dead, suffocated by his skeleton’s skeleton – finds solace in the exhibition of his remains at the Mütter Museum).
Set in the antebellum south, “Black Bodies” is particularly raw and devastating. Here we meet an aging, paternalistic doctor who literally builds his career on the backs of black bodies. Though he fancies himself a “savior” of sorts to the poor African Americans he “serves” (dubiously so), he finds his narcissistic self-view challenged when he accepts an interview request by an out-of-town journalist. (A woman, at that!)
I must confess that I was unable to finish one piece - “Do Not Feed.” Inspired “by exhibit on lead poisoning and dog skulls,” the story – or what I could gather of it, anyway – centers on the moral crisis of a technician at an animal research facility. There in the soft comfort of my bed, surrounded by my own pack of seven rescue dogs, “Do Not Feed” (the title of which refers to the practice of starving vivisected animals prior to “euthanizing” [read: killing] them, so that they’ll leave less of a mess for the humans to mop up) proved just too much to bear. No doubt influenced by Sands’s experiences as an animal laboratory technician, I can only hope that the story’s ending reflects her own changing attitudes toward the necessity and humanity of animal research.
Boy of Bone is a gorgeously written, gorgeously illustrated tome – a work of art. Jon Lezinsky’s illustrations complement Sands’s words beautifully. Although … I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed to find that Boy of Bone doesn’t contain a single photo from the Mütter Museum. While I understand that the museum is fiercely protective of its exhibits (see, e.g., its strict photography policy), are a few pictures in a book that arguably helps to promote the museum too much to ask? One “inspiration” photo per story, perhaps? Especially considering that Sands is married to the director of the museum!
My only other complaint is that the author doesn’t go into much detail about the exhibits behind the stories; the only information we get about Sands’s inspirations amount to not-quite-one sentence blurbs sandwiched in the table of contents (e.g., “…by old photographs of medical subjects” [“Black Bodies”] or “…by the exhibit of a giant colon” [“Freddy Chang’s Live-Die Museum Restaurant”]). Coupled with the lack of information on the museum website, and you’re left to fill in the blanks with your own imagination.
Strong trigger warnings for violence, rape (including incest), racism, sexism, speciesism, and cruelty to animals.
* Also, how can I help but love an anthology whose forward shares a name with my favorite trilogy?
http://www.easyvegan.info/2012/08/15/...
If a collection of short stories “inspired by the mütter museum” strikes you as something that would lean inexorably toward the morbid and gory – the stuff of campfire ghost stories and Halloween horror tales – you’d be half right. While the twelve tales found in Boy of Bone are at turns gruesome and macabre (at times intimately so), author K.R. Sands exhibits great empathy and compassion for her subjects, despite having only conversed with them in her imagination. The result is a collection of fictional stories, inspired by real people and events, that manages to imbue “mere” museum displays – objects and artifacts - with a touching dose of humanity.
Through Sands, some of the “dead voices” who inhabit the Mütter Museum are given the means to speak, to tell us their stories, filled as they are with pain, grief, sadness, suffering – and, joy, peace, and divinity as well. From a man mourning the loss of his conjoined twin (“The Pump Twin”) to a scientist who has fallen “in love” with one of his own medical devices (“The Face Phantom”), the characters you meet within these pages will not soon be forgotten.
While it’s difficult to pick and choose favorites, I especially enjoyed:
* “Madame Sunday’s Horn” (a woman comes to accept and even embrace the unicorn horn growing from her forehead as a sign of god’s grace);
* “What Is Written, Sweet Sister?” (a young Union nurse requests the skin of her deceased soldier brother, so that it might be used to bind a prized family volume – not a Bible, but a book of Poe!); and
* “Boy of Bone” (the sister of a boy – long dead, suffocated by his skeleton’s skeleton – finds solace in the exhibition of his remains at the Mütter Museum).
Set in the antebellum south, “Black Bodies” is particularly raw and devastating. Here we meet an aging, paternalistic doctor who literally builds his career on the backs of black bodies. Though he fancies himself a “savior” of sorts to the poor African Americans he “serves” (dubiously so), he finds his narcissistic self-view challenged when he accepts an interview request by an out-of-town journalist. (A woman, at that!)
I must confess that I was unable to finish one piece - “Do Not Feed.” Inspired “by exhibit on lead poisoning and dog skulls,” the story – or what I could gather of it, anyway – centers on the moral crisis of a technician at an animal research facility. There in the soft comfort of my bed, surrounded by my own pack of seven rescue dogs, “Do Not Feed” (the title of which refers to the practice of starving vivisected animals prior to “euthanizing” [read: killing] them, so that they’ll leave less of a mess for the humans to mop up) proved just too much to bear. No doubt influenced by Sands’s experiences as an animal laboratory technician, I can only hope that the story’s ending reflects her own changing attitudes toward the necessity and humanity of animal research.
Boy of Bone is a gorgeously written, gorgeously illustrated tome – a work of art. Jon Lezinsky’s illustrations complement Sands’s words beautifully. Although … I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed to find that Boy of Bone doesn’t contain a single photo from the Mütter Museum. While I understand that the museum is fiercely protective of its exhibits (see, e.g., its strict photography policy), are a few pictures in a book that arguably helps to promote the museum too much to ask? One “inspiration” photo per story, perhaps? Especially considering that Sands is married to the director of the museum!
My only other complaint is that the author doesn’t go into much detail about the exhibits behind the stories; the only information we get about Sands’s inspirations amount to not-quite-one sentence blurbs sandwiched in the table of contents (e.g., “…by old photographs of medical subjects” [“Black Bodies”] or “…by the exhibit of a giant colon” [“Freddy Chang’s Live-Die Museum Restaurant”]). Coupled with the lack of information on the museum website, and you’re left to fill in the blanks with your own imagination.
Strong trigger warnings for violence, rape (including incest), racism, sexism, speciesism, and cruelty to animals.
* Also, how can I help but love an anthology whose forward shares a name with my favorite trilogy?
http://www.easyvegan.info/2012/08/15/...
August 17, 2012
I am a big fan of the short story, and place high expectations on the form. Hands down, this is the most remarkable collection of short stories I've ever encountered. The writing is excellent, full of nuance, inplications and deep human truth. Each story is fiercely individual and specific, but with themes and tones the run beaneath them and oh-so-gently remind us of certain common threads. (You'll get no spoilers from me!) The stories are all deeply compelling, excellently narrated, and are matched by stunning and evocative original music (preceding each story, but not under the narration) and artwork. Some stories feel like someone has returned from the beyond to personally share a pivotal moment from their lives. Others, as if you are viewing memories through Dumbledore's "pensieve." I read the first story, and knew I wanted to produce it.
November 4, 2018
All I can say is: Wow. This book is such a beautiful insight into the medical field and the stories that were conjured of which each is married to kept me in awe. I bought this book expecting some sort of macabre and dark tales, of which there are a few, but I was so surprised to find multiple stories that filled my heart with something akin to love. Thank you so much for writing one of my new favorite books.
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January 25, 20183.5 stars. It was a cool experience to revisit some of the subjects of the Mutter Museum, months after being there in person. Not all these stories caught my interest, one of them made me sick, but overall it was a good experience.
August 27, 2012
There were one or two stories here that I didn't really care for but overall, the ones I loved more than made up for it.
Quirky, macabre, at times cringe inducing, Sands can weave a tale that has you residing, albeit momentarily, in some one else's skin.
Each story was inspired by an artefact or exhibit from the Mutter Museum, which was sometimes difficult to figure out exactly what it was that inspired each tale. I'd love to see the addition of an authors note for what made her hear these tales in the things she saw.
Not for everyone, but if you like things a little awkward, strange and somewhat gruesome, told lyrically and beautifully (I am still haunted by a couple of tales) then you will love this.
Quirky, macabre, at times cringe inducing, Sands can weave a tale that has you residing, albeit momentarily, in some one else's skin.
Each story was inspired by an artefact or exhibit from the Mutter Museum, which was sometimes difficult to figure out exactly what it was that inspired each tale. I'd love to see the addition of an authors note for what made her hear these tales in the things she saw.
Not for everyone, but if you like things a little awkward, strange and somewhat gruesome, told lyrically and beautifully (I am still haunted by a couple of tales) then you will love this.
February 17, 2012
Full disclosure: I served as writing coach to the author in the creation of these stories. That said, what I praise is her sensitivity in exploring the farthest reaches of what it means to be human. The stories are deeply moving without ever lapsing into sentimentality. The grotesque is held up against human fallibility. What emerges as truly damaged are not the distorted bodies that provide Sands her subject matter, but the distortion of the human psyche in its delusion and brittle reactionism.
August 3, 2015
Very cool! The specimens at the museum were fascinating in their own right, this book added fanciful stories to them.
December 8, 2016
Wish it would have been based all on muetter. Got off track towards the end
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews