The Bone Cutter
It is 1793, and in northern France, British troops under the command of the inexperienced Prince Frederick of York are involved in various bloody skirmishes with the rebel armies and in two successive and disastrous sieges. Into this scenario comes Andrew Jardine, a young Scot with a happy marriage, a pregnant wife, and an almost-completed medical training behind him. Tragedy strikes when Jardine’s wife dies soon after giving birth, leaving him with the immediate need to provide funds for the care of his infant daughter.
We first meet Jardine when he is given the rank of assistant surgical officer and shipped to northern France, where, with nothing more than his own limited experience, a small selection of medical instruments and a textbook or two, he finds himself faced with groups of horribly injured men in a series of reeking spaces. Apart from a brief, doomed encounter with a young French nurse, nothing diverts his focus from the casualties he must care for. He soon earns the respect of not only his patients but also of his military medical colleagues. Jardine emerges from the author’s story as a noble, dedicated and selfless character.
Several aspects of this novel prevent it being the satisfying read it could have been. The first is the fact that it relies almost exclusively on one single strand of its story, i.e. the physical horrors of warfare. The recent loss of his wife and the survival and well-being of his child seem not to concern him and are never significantly referred to. We see events through the author’s eyes rather than through Jardine’s and are asked to care for him without being given due access to him as a fully rounded character. The historical background to key events is noticeably and, perhaps deliberately, absent.
