-
Annotated by:
- Carter, III, Albert Howard
- Date of entry: Apr-25-2016
- Last revised: Apr-25-2016
Summary
The story
of The Heart is a simple, linear
structure. A car accident renders a
young Frenchman, Simon, brain-dead. A medical team proposes harvesting organs,
and his parents, after some turmoil, agree. That’s the first half of the book,
the provenance of this specific heart. The second half describes its delivery
for transplantation. Administrators find recipients, one of them a woman in
Paris. Simon’s heart is transported there by plane and sewn into her chest. All
this in 24 hours.
The narration is complex, with flashbacks, overlapping times, and literary art that is compelling. There are 28 sections to the story but without numbers or chapter headings, and these are often broken up into half a dozen shorter sections. We have an impression of stroboscopic flashes on the action, with high intensity focus. These create a mosaic that we assemble into dramatic pictures. Even major characters arrive without names, and we soon figure them out.
Simon. He’s called the donor, although he had no choice in the matter. At 19 years of age he’s trying to find a path in life. A Maori tattoo is a symbol for that search. He has a girlfriend, Juliette. He fades away as a character (except in others’ memories) and his heart takes center stage.
Marianne and Sean, Simon’s parents. Her emotions, as we would expect, range widely, especially during discussion of whether Simon’s organs can be transplanted. Father Sean has a Polynesian origin and cultural heritage.
Pierre Révol, Thomas Rémige, and Cordélia Owl are respectively the ICU physician, nurse, and the transplant coordinator. These are vividly drawn, with unusual qualities. Skilled professionals, they are the team the supplies the heart.
Marthe Carrare, Claire Méjan, and Virgilio Breva are a national administrator, the recipient, and a surgeon. Described in memorable language, they are the receiving team.
The characters’ names give hints of de Kerangal’s range. Since the 1789 Revolution Marianne has been a well-known French national symbol for common people and democracy, but Virgilio Breva is from Italy and Cordélia (recalling King Lear) Owl (as in wise?) has a grandmother from Bristol, England. We learn of personal habits regarding tobacco, peyote, sex, and singing. Medicine is part of a larger world of people of many sorts.
Even minor characters, such as Simon’s girlfriend Juliette and other medical personnel are touching and memorable.
These characters animate the story with their passion, mystery, even heroism. While we don’t know the final outcome of the implanted heart, the text shows the professionalism of the medical team, the French national system that evidently works, sensitive care of patients and families, and in the last pages, rituals of affirmation for medical art and for patients.
There is richness in de Kerangal’s style. At times it is direct, reflecting the thoughts of characters. At times it is ornate, even baroque. She uses many images and metaphors, often with large, epic qualities. A very long sentence about the over-wrought parents describes them as “alone in the world, and exhaustion breaks over them like a tidal wave” (p. 141). The style uses many similes, often with dramatic and unexpected comparisons. There are references to geology, astronomy, even American TV hospital drama. The style is at times lyric…we might say “operatic.” One page about Cordélia is very, very funny.
In a different tone, the details of medicine, law, and ethics are carefully presented, and visual imagery puts us in the hospital rooms, the OR, and crowded streets around a soccer game. Throughout it appears that translator Sam Taylor has done an admirable job.
The text invites us to consider large visions of wholeness. All the major characters seek some comprehensive unity to their lives, and they avoid orthodoxies such as religion, patriotism, and economic gain. Sean has his Polynesian heritage and boat-building passion, which he has shared with Simon. Cordélia, at 25, is an excellent nurse, wise beyond her years in some ways, but is as dazzled by a man as any teenaged girl. Nurse Rémige has his master’s in philosophy, loves the song of rare birds, and is, himself, a serious singer.
The narration is complex, with flashbacks, overlapping times, and literary art that is compelling. There are 28 sections to the story but without numbers or chapter headings, and these are often broken up into half a dozen shorter sections. We have an impression of stroboscopic flashes on the action, with high intensity focus. These create a mosaic that we assemble into dramatic pictures. Even major characters arrive without names, and we soon figure them out.
Simon. He’s called the donor, although he had no choice in the matter. At 19 years of age he’s trying to find a path in life. A Maori tattoo is a symbol for that search. He has a girlfriend, Juliette. He fades away as a character (except in others’ memories) and his heart takes center stage.
Marianne and Sean, Simon’s parents. Her emotions, as we would expect, range widely, especially during discussion of whether Simon’s organs can be transplanted. Father Sean has a Polynesian origin and cultural heritage.
Pierre Révol, Thomas Rémige, and Cordélia Owl are respectively the ICU physician, nurse, and the transplant coordinator. These are vividly drawn, with unusual qualities. Skilled professionals, they are the team the supplies the heart.
Marthe Carrare, Claire Méjan, and Virgilio Breva are a national administrator, the recipient, and a surgeon. Described in memorable language, they are the receiving team.
The characters’ names give hints of de Kerangal’s range. Since the 1789 Revolution Marianne has been a well-known French national symbol for common people and democracy, but Virgilio Breva is from Italy and Cordélia (recalling King Lear) Owl (as in wise?) has a grandmother from Bristol, England. We learn of personal habits regarding tobacco, peyote, sex, and singing. Medicine is part of a larger world of people of many sorts.
Even minor characters, such as Simon’s girlfriend Juliette and other medical personnel are touching and memorable.
These characters animate the story with their passion, mystery, even heroism. While we don’t know the final outcome of the implanted heart, the text shows the professionalism of the medical team, the French national system that evidently works, sensitive care of patients and families, and in the last pages, rituals of affirmation for medical art and for patients.
There is richness in de Kerangal’s style. At times it is direct, reflecting the thoughts of characters. At times it is ornate, even baroque. She uses many images and metaphors, often with large, epic qualities. A very long sentence about the over-wrought parents describes them as “alone in the world, and exhaustion breaks over them like a tidal wave” (p. 141). The style uses many similes, often with dramatic and unexpected comparisons. There are references to geology, astronomy, even American TV hospital drama. The style is at times lyric…we might say “operatic.” One page about Cordélia is very, very funny.
In a different tone, the details of medicine, law, and ethics are carefully presented, and visual imagery puts us in the hospital rooms, the OR, and crowded streets around a soccer game. Throughout it appears that translator Sam Taylor has done an admirable job.
The text invites us to consider large visions of wholeness. All the major characters seek some comprehensive unity to their lives, and they avoid orthodoxies such as religion, patriotism, and economic gain. Sean has his Polynesian heritage and boat-building passion, which he has shared with Simon. Cordélia, at 25, is an excellent nurse, wise beyond her years in some ways, but is as dazzled by a man as any teenaged girl. Nurse Rémige has his master’s in philosophy, loves the song of rare birds, and is, himself, a serious singer.
Miscellaneous
The
original title is Réparer les vivants.
The British title is “To Mend the Living,” a more accurate translation and more evocative about healing patients and
people in general. I think of Richard Selzer’s essay (and book) “Taking the
World in for Repairs,” also multicultural and multiprofessional, and
celebrating steadfastness even in difficult circumstances.
Primary Source
Éditions Gallimard
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Place Published
New York
Edition
2016
Page Count
242
Commentary
The author infuses her originality and literary craft into the text so liberally that the reader keeps turning pages while hoping the book will never end.
For students of health humanities in general (and literature and medicine in particular), this is not only a richly written book, but it is also unusual in showing multiple layers of people involved: doctors and patients, of course, but also parents, a sister, a girlfriend, medical administrators, even transport personnel within and between hospitals. We see medical ethics worked out on a national scale.
The characters, with all their strengths and weaknesses, are engaging and admirable. Whatever the pressures of the professional and private lives, they deliver thoughtful and continuous care. Medical or nonmedical, they are heroic as they seek meaning and order for their lives. They are also original in not accepting the most obvious belief structures of ordinary society. We may think of Sartre’s character Orestes who believes in “mon chemin,” or, as Sinatra sang, “my way.”