Anatomy: A Love Story
In Edinburgh in the early 19th century, it was unheard of for a young lady to even think about becoming a surgeon. Medical science was advancing, but there was still a vast difference between physicians who used plants, herbs, and simple medicines, and surgeons with their scalpels, knives, and saws. And these surgeons, eager to learn and experiment, needed bodies to work on. Preferably alive, but recently dead would do.
But the well-bred young Hazel Sinnett passionately wants to be a surgeon. Inevitably she meets Jack Currer, a so-called resurrectionist, who makes his living digging up recently buried people to sell to surgeons and their students. They fall in love, although Hazel is working feverishly hard to try to pass the examination to become a surgeon. The “Roman plague” hits Edinburgh, and Hazel finds herself running what is in effect a small hospital treating poor people and trying, with Jack’s help, to find a medicinal cure for the plague.
Grave-digging, surgical procedures, and experiments make an unusual setting for a novel, but the author has crafted a compelling tale based on a rather gruesome period in Edinburgh’s history. Not a story for the squeamish, this is a realistic depiction of life in a university city 200 years ago. Poverty forced people to earn money in ways that repelled them; discovery meant severe punishment while surgeons were lauded for their work.
The author points this out while absorbing the reader in a poignant love story of two people separated not only by money and class distinction but also by education and the expectations of society. It is a multi-layered novel, engrossing and beautifully researched. The world of gravediggers and crudely performed surgeries is one that readers seldom encounter but very hard to forget.
