The Bone Woman : A Forensic Anthropologist's Search for Truth in the Mass Graves of Rwanda,Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo

Rating:
Summary: I was expecting to invalidate a lot of the complaints ...
Review: about Clea Koff's book, but I was more and more disappointed as the book progressed. Gone was the wisdom of her experience, missing was the self-discovery and introspection, only barely existent was her experience of the people around her who had survived the horrors, and the writing that replaced what had begun to glimmer in the first few chapters was that of a hardened, unhappy woman who seemed stressed out and angry at her coworkers.

This does not mean that the book was completely worthless to me, and for that reason I give it three stars. I think it is an extremely important book, one that examines one step of the process by which someone guilty of genocide comes to justice, and one that pays ample tribute to the remains of the people who cry out for justice.

I hope Clea has found more peace, both with her coworkers and with herself, in the four years since the last part of the book. I did feel as though I was there, experiencing every part of it with her, and she did an ample job of keeping the jargon of her profession to a manageable level -- which was something that had worried me prior to reading the book. She really is a wonderful writer on the face of it, but just needed to focus a bit less on the problems that happened within each mission.

Rating:
Summary: Shallow, Not Unlike the Graves
Review: Arrogance does not begin to describe the author's perspective toward those with whom she interacts throughout her little adventure. Her insecurity is clearly derived from an inferiority complex - or god forbid a superiority complex - gone awry while working side-by-side with world-renowned experts in the human rights field. As evidenced in her tales, she does not take criticism well, and always blames personality flaws in others while devoid of any self-critique. Her negative portrayal of those she worked with is often shallow, and demonstrates that she learned little to nothing ABOUT her colleagues, while ironically failing to appreciate all that she did learn FROM them. Sorry you had to share a tent, but grow up, Clea; the real story is NOT about you. Your pettiness is a disservice to the victims who, throughout your book, remained buried under that chip on your shoulder.

Rating:
Summary: Good for a anthro students
Review: As an anthro student contemplating forensics, i found the book to be quite telling of what i would have to endure if i were to take the same career route. i saw what it was like and what was required of someone mentally when they were considered a worker and what responsibilities one would have to deal with when they were mgmt. It was an easy read for the most part and it served as a personal insight to the everyday dealings of one forensic anthropologist. i have a better idea of what goes on, the different types of people i could work with and how people would behave in certain conditions. I would have liked to know more about the conditions of the bones and the people that were killed and I would have liked to learn more about the results from the search for the truth in the mass graves... but i can always read other sources for that. Getting a first hand read on people who had to deal with this is not very easy to find. I appreciated this book.

Rating:
Summary: Complain, complain, complain
Review: As an earlier reviewer pointed out, _The Bone Woman_ seems to be a journal that was fleshed out (no pun intended) to become a narrative. I found it lacking in several respects. The book was interesting regarding the day to day work of a forensic anthropologist. However, the interminable complaints - about "management" versus "worker", the press and foreign dignitaries visiting work sites (they are scenes of genocide, for crying out loud!), living conditions, and co-workers in general detracted from the book.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Quit Your Day Job
Review: Clea Koff has an interesting story to tell, but she should have gotten a professional to tell it for her. Perhaps someone who could have toned down some of the unpleasant parts of her personality. As a writer, she does herself no favors. She comes across as arrogant, condescending and petulant. She points out repeatedly all the mistakes her co-workers made and how she put up with them graciously. One wonders if any of her associates are speaking to her after the release of this book.

The fact that the author is a scientist hurts her writing as well. It appears that she has gotten used to recording all details, relevant or not. The Bone Woman contains many, many sentences that just do not add anything at all to the story. It almost felt like reading an unedited first draft.

One of the most disturbing things about this whole book is her complete lack of emotion. I know she can't allow herself to break down in the field, but she seems almost robotic. The scenes where she does show some emotion seem contrived and perhaps added at the insistence of an editor. The fact that the much-maligned Bill gets a bigger hotel room upsets her more than the bodies she unearths.

Ms. Koff mentions her unorthodox upbringing and how it gave her the advantage of having little national identity. Too bad she also received an exaggerated sense of self-importance. It's amazing to read a book about someone who can look at graves full of murdered children and still think the world revolves around her.

Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Window Into Grisly Work
Review: Honestly, I am somewhat surprised by the tone and number of negative reviews of this book. While no reviewer would pretend that the Bone Woman is any work of great storytelling, I nonetheless found it to be an intriguing look into a world that I myself can scarcely imagine: that of forensic anthropology.

One regular criticism of the book seems to be that Koff expresses no moments of emotion in the field, whereas she experiences major frustration over certain perceived iniquities in the organization of the excavations. I believe that Koff herself more than addresses this seeming dichotomy when she stresses, early on in the book, her love of her work and her ability to find some measure of peculiar tranquility in excavating the graves, a sense of being party to an act of absolute justice.

Given that approach, I don't think that her apparent lack of emotional trauma in the field is so hard to understand, and her frustrations with the bureaucratic nature of field operations is also in sync with other memoirs written by various NGO or UN workers. I would also suspect that often, professional detachment in the field creates stress that is released via frustrations with intra-staff relations outside of it. Koff was a woman who wished to be completely engaged by her work: the reality of disturbances to that immersion naturally emerge in the text.

With that said, the book itself is no classic; it lacks a sense of greater purpose, or a concept of her work's place in the greater whole. It is field-focused and neither particularly revelatory or particularly insightful.

However, to those interested in humanitarian efforts and in world events, it is an accessible and interesting look into the grisly and yet absolutely necessary work of documenting war crimes' dead.

Take the Bone Woman for what it is: a rare opportunity to get a hands-on feel of what is for most of us and almost unimaginable profession. As an opportunity to see a window into that world, it has value indeed.

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: I was disappointed with The Bone Woman. I hoped to read an account of how the author's expertise solved the mystery of people's death. I expected to learn interesting facts about what a person's bones tell about him. Instead I got a blog entailing the minutia of her daily living. I learned what the author ate, how she showered and how she urinated. She should stick to forensic anthropology and leave the writing to authors.

Rating:
Summary: The Bone Woman : A Forensic Anthropologist's Search for Trut
Review: In-depth, touching and comprehensive book. Author deserves the appreciation on writing such a book at such an age. It was quite charming to look her in BBC HardTalk Extra as well.

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: It's simply hard to believe that Clea Koff was only 23 years old when she experienced some of the things she describes in this remarkable book. Ms. Koff is a forensic anthropologist who exhumed mass graves in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and elsewhere in the 1990s, and kept a meticulous journal of her activities. She's converted that journal to lucid and poetic prose that confronts mortality squarely and underscores the extraordinary inhumanity that human beings are capable of. She writes about the grisliest details with grace, luminosity, accuracy, and even lyricism. This is a must read and I can't recommend it too highly. It's one of those books that can change your life.

Rating:
Summary: A stunning book and a compelling read
Review: It's simply hard to believe that Clea Koff was only 23 years old when she experienced some of the things she describes in this remarkable book. Ms. Koff is a forensic anthropologist who exhumed mass graves in Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo and elsewhere in the 1990s, and kept a meticulous journal of her activities. She's converted that journal to lucid and poetic prose that confronts mortality squarely and underscores the extraordinary inhumanity that human beings are capable of. She writes about the grisliest details with grace, luminosity, accuracy, and even lyricism. This is a must read and I can't recommend it too highly. It's one of those books that can change your life.