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The Heart
Just before dawn on a Sunday morning, three teenage boys go surfing. While driving home exhausted, the boys are involved in a fatal car accident on a deserted road. Two of the boys are wearing seat belts; one goes through the windshield. The doctors declare him brain-dead shortly after arriving at the hospital, but his heart is still beating.
The Heart takes place over the twenty-four hours surrounding the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.
As stylistically audacious as it is emotionally explosive, The Heart mesmerized readers in France, where it has been hailed as the breakthrough work of a new literary star. With the precision of a surgeon and the language of a poet, de Kerangal has made a major contribution to both medicine and literature with an epic tale of grief, hope, and survival.
The Heart takes place over the twenty-four hours surrounding the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.
As stylistically audacious as it is emotionally explosive, The Heart mesmerized readers in France, where it has been hailed as the breakthrough work of a new literary star. With the precision of a surgeon and the language of a poet, de Kerangal has made a major contribution to both medicine and literature with an epic tale of grief, hope, and survival.
242 pages, Hardcover
First published January 2, 2014
About the author
Maylis de Kerangal
41 books392 followersMaylis de Kerangal est une femme de lettres française, née le 16 juin 1967 à Toulon. Elle passe son enfance au Havre, fille et petite-fille de capitaine au long cours. Elle étudie en classe préparatoire au lycée Jeanne-d'Arc de Rouen et ensuite à Paris de 1985 à 1990 l'histoire, la philosophie et l'ethnologie. Elle commence à travailler chez Gallimard jeunesse une première fois de 1991 à 1996, avant de faire deux séjours aux États-Unis, à Golden dans le Colorado en 1997. Elle reprend sa formation en passant une année à l'EHESS à Paris en 1998.
Carrière d'écrivain[modifier | modifier le code]
Elle publie son premier roman, Je marche sous un ciel de traîne, en 2000, suivis en 2003 par La Vie voyageuse, puis par Ni fleurs, ni couronnes en 2006, Dans les rapides en 2007 et par Corniche Kennedy en 2008. Ce dernier roman figure cette année-là dans la sélection de plusieurs prix littéraires comme le Médicis ou le Femina.
Elle crée en même temps les Éditions du Baron Perché spécialisées dans la jeunesse où elle travaille de 2004 à 2008, avant de se consacrer à l'écriture. Elle participe aussi à la revue Inculte3.
Son roman Naissance d'un pont est publié en 2010. Selon elle, « Il s’agit d’une sorte de western, autrement dit d’un roman de fondation, et la référence à ce genre cinématographique opère dans le texte, l’écriture travaille en plan large, brasse du ciel, des paysages, des matières, des hommes, et resserre sa focale sur les héros qui sont toujours pris dans l’action, dans la nécessité de répondre à une situation. ». Le 3 novembre 2010, l'ouvrage remporte à l'unanimité et au premier tour le prix Médicis. Le livre remporte aussi le Prix Franz Hessel et est, la même année, sélectionné pour les prix Femina, Goncourt, et Flore. Le Prix Franz Hessel permet à l'ouvrage de bénéficier d'une traduction en allemand, parue en 2012 chez Suhrkamp.
En 2011, elle est l'une des participantes du Salon du livre de Beyrouth au BIEL (Beirut International Exhibition & Leisure Center).
En 2012, elle remporte le prix Landerneau pour son roman Tangente vers l'est paru aux éditions Verticales.
En 2014, elle est la première lauréate du Roman des étudiants France Culture-Télérama (ancien Prix France Culture-Télérama), pour son roman Réparer les vivants14 qui a été aussi couronnée par le Grand prix RTL-Lire 2014. Dans celui-ci, elle suit pendant 24 heures le périple du coeur du jeune Simon, en mort cérébrale, jusqu'à la transplantation.
Carrière d'écrivain[modifier | modifier le code]
Elle publie son premier roman, Je marche sous un ciel de traîne, en 2000, suivis en 2003 par La Vie voyageuse, puis par Ni fleurs, ni couronnes en 2006, Dans les rapides en 2007 et par Corniche Kennedy en 2008. Ce dernier roman figure cette année-là dans la sélection de plusieurs prix littéraires comme le Médicis ou le Femina.
Elle crée en même temps les Éditions du Baron Perché spécialisées dans la jeunesse où elle travaille de 2004 à 2008, avant de se consacrer à l'écriture. Elle participe aussi à la revue Inculte3.
Son roman Naissance d'un pont est publié en 2010. Selon elle, « Il s’agit d’une sorte de western, autrement dit d’un roman de fondation, et la référence à ce genre cinématographique opère dans le texte, l’écriture travaille en plan large, brasse du ciel, des paysages, des matières, des hommes, et resserre sa focale sur les héros qui sont toujours pris dans l’action, dans la nécessité de répondre à une situation. ». Le 3 novembre 2010, l'ouvrage remporte à l'unanimité et au premier tour le prix Médicis. Le livre remporte aussi le Prix Franz Hessel et est, la même année, sélectionné pour les prix Femina, Goncourt, et Flore. Le Prix Franz Hessel permet à l'ouvrage de bénéficier d'une traduction en allemand, parue en 2012 chez Suhrkamp.
En 2011, elle est l'une des participantes du Salon du livre de Beyrouth au BIEL (Beirut International Exhibition & Leisure Center).
En 2012, elle remporte le prix Landerneau pour son roman Tangente vers l'est paru aux éditions Verticales.
En 2014, elle est la première lauréate du Roman des étudiants France Culture-Télérama (ancien Prix France Culture-Télérama), pour son roman Réparer les vivants14 qui a été aussi couronnée par le Grand prix RTL-Lire 2014. Dans celui-ci, elle suit pendant 24 heures le périple du coeur du jeune Simon, en mort cérébrale, jusqu'à la transplantation.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,413 reviews
June 13, 2020
Reports from the heart
Mend the Living is a gripping novel of stunning beauty, an audacious and highly original composition on the fragility of life.
One man's death is another man's breath. As to the donation and transplantation of vital organs, this proverb, when interpreted literally, is a lapalissade. In Dutch, there exists an expression with a similar significance, connecting death with bread instead of breath: one man’s death is another one’s bread. Perhaps it is less harshly formulated, but in the context of de Kerangal’s novel this truism also illustrates that, inevitably, some people factually are earning their living with the death of others, and sometimes operate in the twilight between life and death. From the moment Simon, a 20 year old, in limbo between life and death after a car accident, is transported to the intensive care ward of the hospital, the reader discerns a procession of characters, involved in a transplantation process, like the cogs in the machinery: doctors, nurses, surgeons, coordinator, data base administrator, logistic staff. Why would they go through the motions? ‘We have to think of the living, we have to think of the ones left behind’, one of the characters reminds himself, referring to a line of dialogue that he photocopied from Chekhov’s play Platonov, sticking on his office’s door: ‘what shall we do Nicolas? Bury the dead and mend the living’ (hence the novel’s title).
Because action has to be taken swiftly in this matters - the organs deteriorate quickly once a person is brain dead - de Kerangal aptly draws the reader into the sense of urgency the whole transplantation process exhales, cogently depicting the haunting decision process, resulting in a breath-taking pace, accelerated by a sensible use of punctuation:
De Kerangal metamorphoses the medical jargon, undertakings and processes into marvelous, lyrical, phrases, creating a sublime musical ambience out of technical details with her long, meandering, pulsating sentences - an agile prose poem bewildering the senses.
Incredibly well researched and meticulously documented on the technical side, this novel is a tour de force, but it is the interaction of the medical professionals with the people concerned and the evocation of the impact of Simon’s death on so many different lives that renders this novel so touching and powerful, without turning mawkish.
There is the waiting beneficiary, well aware receiving the organ and surviving means that someone else will have to die first. There are Simon’s parents, Marianne and Sean, incredulous, forced to take decisions quickly, uncertain if their son is ‘really’, incontrovertibly dead, while his beautiful body, aided by the machinery, is still so warm, alive, and intact:
De Kerangal’s sensory, empathic prose and cinematic style draws the reader into the most intimate moments of saying goodbye to the beloved son:
The succinct chapter on Simon’s girlfriend Juliette, still unaware of what happened to Simon, daydreaming on their love, constitutes one the most poignant fragments in the novel:
Through de Kerangal’s labyrinthine but perfectly well-balanced phrases, the reader follows the trajectory from the heart pulsing in young Simon’s body to its implantation into the recipient’s.
Although the fate of other vital organs is dealt with too, it is the heart, this lyrical muscle, this murderers’ den and residence/abode of lofty feelings and the soul, that fulfills the pivotal role in this transplantation tale, enabling de Kerangal to pluck the strings of the organ’s symbolic, allegorical, linguistic and affecting connotations, pondering simultaneously, and recurrently, on the impact and importance of language:
Once Simon’s parents get off the screen, the emotive tension in the novel slightly weakens, but the ongoing sequences still offer a compelling insider’s view into an unfamiliar world, in what is to the most of us an exceptional situation, mostly getting only vague inklings of thought, while it is business as usual for some medical professionals, demi-godlike demiurgs which minds can easily switch from surgery to trivialities like a football match or the splendid sex they had the night before.
I read the novel in a Dutch translation, and would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher Mac Lehose Press for providing me with a copy of the English translation (by Jessica Moore), which allowed me to insert some quotes in English.
---------------------------------
Update November 8th, 2016
Today I found out that a film has been made out of Mend the Living. In a long interview yesterday with its director (Katell Quillévéré) and a review strongly praising the film itself today (‘fragile and heart-warming’), my self-declared ‘quality newspaper’ doesn’t even bother to mention Maylis de Kerangal’s name. About the book the film reviewer has nothing more to say than that 'the narrative comes from a popular French novel’, while his very own newspaper published a rave review on the book less than 2 years ago and the novel was longlisted for the Man Booker International 2016.
Mend the Living is a gripping novel of stunning beauty, an audacious and highly original composition on the fragility of life.
One man's death is another man's breath. As to the donation and transplantation of vital organs, this proverb, when interpreted literally, is a lapalissade. In Dutch, there exists an expression with a similar significance, connecting death with bread instead of breath: one man’s death is another one’s bread. Perhaps it is less harshly formulated, but in the context of de Kerangal’s novel this truism also illustrates that, inevitably, some people factually are earning their living with the death of others, and sometimes operate in the twilight between life and death. From the moment Simon, a 20 year old, in limbo between life and death after a car accident, is transported to the intensive care ward of the hospital, the reader discerns a procession of characters, involved in a transplantation process, like the cogs in the machinery: doctors, nurses, surgeons, coordinator, data base administrator, logistic staff. Why would they go through the motions? ‘We have to think of the living, we have to think of the ones left behind’, one of the characters reminds himself, referring to a line of dialogue that he photocopied from Chekhov’s play Platonov, sticking on his office’s door: ‘what shall we do Nicolas? Bury the dead and mend the living’ (hence the novel’s title).
Because action has to be taken swiftly in this matters - the organs deteriorate quickly once a person is brain dead - de Kerangal aptly draws the reader into the sense of urgency the whole transplantation process exhales, cogently depicting the haunting decision process, resulting in a breath-taking pace, accelerated by a sensible use of punctuation:
Conscious that punctuation is the anatomy of language, the structure of meaning, and he visualizes the opening sentence, its musical line, and gauges the first syllable he will utter.
De Kerangal metamorphoses the medical jargon, undertakings and processes into marvelous, lyrical, phrases, creating a sublime musical ambience out of technical details with her long, meandering, pulsating sentences - an agile prose poem bewildering the senses.
Incredibly well researched and meticulously documented on the technical side, this novel is a tour de force, but it is the interaction of the medical professionals with the people concerned and the evocation of the impact of Simon’s death on so many different lives that renders this novel so touching and powerful, without turning mawkish.
There is the waiting beneficiary, well aware receiving the organ and surviving means that someone else will have to die first. There are Simon’s parents, Marianne and Sean, incredulous, forced to take decisions quickly, uncertain if their son is ‘really’, incontrovertibly dead, while his beautiful body, aided by the machinery, is still so warm, alive, and intact:
How could they even envision it, Simon’s death, when his complexion still flushes pink, and supple, when his nape still bathes in cool blue watercress and he is stretched out with his feet in the gladiolus.
De Kerangal’s sensory, empathic prose and cinematic style draws the reader into the most intimate moments of saying goodbye to the beloved son:
Sean places his forehead against that of a the young man stretched out, his skin is still warm and there it is, his smell, smell of wool and cotton, smell of the sea, and Sean probably begins to whisper words just for the two of them, words that no one else can hear and that we will never know, archaic babble from the Polynesian isles, or mana words that have crossed unaltered through all the layers of language, embers that glow red with a fire intact, this dense, slow matter, inexhaustible, this wisdom.
The succinct chapter on Simon’s girlfriend Juliette, still unaware of what happened to Simon, daydreaming on their love, constitutes one the most poignant fragments in the novel:
The day stretches out in Juliette’s room and little by little the white labyrinth opens a passage to that September day, that first day, the matter of the air slowly taking form once they were finally walking side by side, as though invisible particles were coming together around them under the effect of sudden acceleration, their bodies sending a signal to each other once they’d passed the high school gates, in the aphonic, archaic language that was already the language of desire.
Through de Kerangal’s labyrinthine but perfectly well-balanced phrases, the reader follows the trajectory from the heart pulsing in young Simon’s body to its implantation into the recipient’s.
Although the fate of other vital organs is dealt with too, it is the heart, this lyrical muscle, this murderers’ den and residence/abode of lofty feelings and the soul, that fulfills the pivotal role in this transplantation tale, enabling de Kerangal to pluck the strings of the organ’s symbolic, allegorical, linguistic and affecting connotations, pondering simultaneously, and recurrently, on the impact and importance of language:
The young surgeon is amazed at the way (the heart) it is imprinted in language, at its recurrent presence precisely at this magic point of language, always situated at the exact intersection of the literal and the figurative, the muscle and the affect; he takes great delight in metaphors and figures of speech in which is the analogy of life itself, an d he repeats ad infinitum that although it was the first to appear, the heart will also be the last to disappear.
Once Simon’s parents get off the screen, the emotive tension in the novel slightly weakens, but the ongoing sequences still offer a compelling insider’s view into an unfamiliar world, in what is to the most of us an exceptional situation, mostly getting only vague inklings of thought, while it is business as usual for some medical professionals, demi-godlike demiurgs which minds can easily switch from surgery to trivialities like a football match or the splendid sex they had the night before.
I read the novel in a Dutch translation, and would like to thank NetGalley and the publisher Mac Lehose Press for providing me with a copy of the English translation (by Jessica Moore), which allowed me to insert some quotes in English.
---------------------------------
Update November 8th, 2016
Today I found out that a film has been made out of Mend the Living. In a long interview yesterday with its director (Katell Quillévéré) and a review strongly praising the film itself today (‘fragile and heart-warming’), my self-declared ‘quality newspaper’ doesn’t even bother to mention Maylis de Kerangal’s name. About the book the film reviewer has nothing more to say than that 'the narrative comes from a popular French novel’, while his very own newspaper published a rave review on the book less than 2 years ago and the novel was longlisted for the Man Booker International 2016.
December 18, 2020
TERRA INCOGNITA
Dal film omonimo diretto da Katell Quillévéré nel 2016. Simon fa il surf di primo mattino.
Mayliss de Kerangal viene definita da alcuni critici la migliore scrittrice francese degli ultimi anni: non sono in grado di confermarlo, ma arrivato alla seconda lettura posso senz’altro considerarmi un suo fan.
Riparare i viventi è come un piano sequenza che esplora emozioni, descritto con precisione e minuzia chirurgica.
E, la chirurgia è importante in questo romanzo, ne è materia, motore e combustibile.
La scrittura incalza, affascinante e sinuosa, come la macchina da presa di Birdman, scrittura sia realistica, non fosse altro che per la precisione dei dettagli tecnici e della terminologia medica, scrittura sia poetica, avanti e indietro nel tempo, dal passato, prossimo e remoto, al presente, anche a quello che sta per farsi presente futuro, con parole scelte per stimolare tutti i sensi.
La stessa lingua adottata per incarnare il gesto scientifico è innestata di parole scientifiche, di termini e procedure mediche, trapianto in letteratura di materia apparentemente incompatibile.
La precisione dei dettagli tecnici è per me quasi una questione di etica letteraria. E deve essere innanzitutto linguistica, motivo per cui cerco d'impossessarmi di quei linguaggi tecnici e specialistici, i quali, benché apparentemente strani e misteriosi, devono essere reintrodotti nel linguaggio romanzesco.
Simon in sala operatoria.
È la storia di un trapianto: un giovane di nome Simon muore in un incidente d’auto e i suoi organi possono essere trapiantati – i polmoni vanno in una direzione, il fegato verso un altro ospedale, i reni a un altro ancora.
De Kerangal segue il cuore: per quanto sia l’arresto delle funzioni cerebrali a determinare il passaggio dalla vita alla morte, il cuore, la pompa idraulica del nostro corpo, nella cultura occidentale è la sede dei sentimenti e dell'amore - il muscolo della vita è qui immaginato come una simbolica scatola nera dell'individuo, in cui sono conservate sia la sua vita affettiva che le sue emozioni.
E allora via, dietro al cuore, una ‘migrazione cardiaca’ che evoca i personaggi uno alla volta, facendoli ‘nascere’ davanti agli occhi del lettore (il giovane, genitori e sorella, la fidanzata, l'infermiera, i medici incaricati degli espianti, la persona che riceverà il dono…), ognuno in modo diverso ma tutti legati a quel corpo.
Il risultato è un romanzo denso di emozioni e riflessioni, un libro sulla morte che si trasforma in un canto di vita e di speranza: il dono degli organi è un gesto di pregnante altruismo che non aspetta nulla in cambio, tanto più significativo in una società fortemente caratterizzata dall’individuo più che dalla collettività.
Mamma, papà e Simon.
Tutto si svolge nell’arco di 24 ore: le lancette segnano la stessa ora all’inizio e alla fine del romanzo, le 5:50 del mattino quando Simon sente la sveglia e lascia la fidanzata per unirsi agli amici surfisti, cavalca l’onda alta un metro e mezzo e si trasforma in un’onda che non arriva più a riva.
E sono le 5:49 quando il cuore di Simon inizia a battere nel corpo di Claire.
Un giorno che sembra un attimo eterno: de Kerangal seziona i secondi in frammenti di eternità.
Dal film omonimo diretto da Katell Quillévéré nel 2016. Simon fa il surf di primo mattino.
Mayliss de Kerangal viene definita da alcuni critici la migliore scrittrice francese degli ultimi anni: non sono in grado di confermarlo, ma arrivato alla seconda lettura posso senz’altro considerarmi un suo fan.
Riparare i viventi è come un piano sequenza che esplora emozioni, descritto con precisione e minuzia chirurgica.
E, la chirurgia è importante in questo romanzo, ne è materia, motore e combustibile.
La scrittura incalza, affascinante e sinuosa, come la macchina da presa di Birdman, scrittura sia realistica, non fosse altro che per la precisione dei dettagli tecnici e della terminologia medica, scrittura sia poetica, avanti e indietro nel tempo, dal passato, prossimo e remoto, al presente, anche a quello che sta per farsi presente futuro, con parole scelte per stimolare tutti i sensi.
La stessa lingua adottata per incarnare il gesto scientifico è innestata di parole scientifiche, di termini e procedure mediche, trapianto in letteratura di materia apparentemente incompatibile.
La precisione dei dettagli tecnici è per me quasi una questione di etica letteraria. E deve essere innanzitutto linguistica, motivo per cui cerco d'impossessarmi di quei linguaggi tecnici e specialistici, i quali, benché apparentemente strani e misteriosi, devono essere reintrodotti nel linguaggio romanzesco.
Simon in sala operatoria.
È la storia di un trapianto: un giovane di nome Simon muore in un incidente d’auto e i suoi organi possono essere trapiantati – i polmoni vanno in una direzione, il fegato verso un altro ospedale, i reni a un altro ancora.
De Kerangal segue il cuore: per quanto sia l’arresto delle funzioni cerebrali a determinare il passaggio dalla vita alla morte, il cuore, la pompa idraulica del nostro corpo, nella cultura occidentale è la sede dei sentimenti e dell'amore - il muscolo della vita è qui immaginato come una simbolica scatola nera dell'individuo, in cui sono conservate sia la sua vita affettiva che le sue emozioni.
E allora via, dietro al cuore, una ‘migrazione cardiaca’ che evoca i personaggi uno alla volta, facendoli ‘nascere’ davanti agli occhi del lettore (il giovane, genitori e sorella, la fidanzata, l'infermiera, i medici incaricati degli espianti, la persona che riceverà il dono…), ognuno in modo diverso ma tutti legati a quel corpo.
Il risultato è un romanzo denso di emozioni e riflessioni, un libro sulla morte che si trasforma in un canto di vita e di speranza: il dono degli organi è un gesto di pregnante altruismo che non aspetta nulla in cambio, tanto più significativo in una società fortemente caratterizzata dall’individuo più che dalla collettività.
Mamma, papà e Simon.
Tutto si svolge nell’arco di 24 ore: le lancette segnano la stessa ora all’inizio e alla fine del romanzo, le 5:50 del mattino quando Simon sente la sveglia e lascia la fidanzata per unirsi agli amici surfisti, cavalca l’onda alta un metro e mezzo e si trasforma in un’onda che non arriva più a riva.
E sono le 5:49 quando il cuore di Simon inizia a battere nel corpo di Claire.
Un giorno che sembra un attimo eterno: de Kerangal seziona i secondi in frammenti di eternità.
February 27, 2016
A horrible tragedy, a young man lies in a hospital declared brain dead. This is a book that takes place in twenty four hours, from his declaration of death, his parents being told and the process started for the transplanting of his organs. Stories are told about everyone involved in this devastating process, from the parent's grief, the doctor who declares him dead, the transplant co-ordination, and everyone else involved in this process which means sorrow for some and new life for others.
Translated novel, French in origin this is a best seller in that country. The writing is at times straightforward, at others stream of consciousness. The tone is matter of fact which keeps the reader at a distance. Still it is a very interesting look at the organ donation process and one interesting fact, in France approval for donation is implied if the person did not declare themselves against it before death. In the United States, permission must be granted before hand.
Very different read, very informative.
Translated novel, French in origin this is a best seller in that country. The writing is at times straightforward, at others stream of consciousness. The tone is matter of fact which keeps the reader at a distance. Still it is a very interesting look at the organ donation process and one interesting fact, in France approval for donation is implied if the person did not declare themselves against it before death. In the United States, permission must be granted before hand.
Very different read, very informative.
July 24, 2017
Is it possible to fall in love with a book? Probably yes, as it has just happened to me. The symptoms are typical: I keep thinking about it almost all the time. I can't sleep. I can't eat. I can't concentrate. Fortunately, I'm having summer holidays at the moment, otherwise it would be really hard.
I want to share my thoughts and impressions with you badly. I really do. The problem is I am at a complete loss for words. I think it would be better if, instead of writing a review, I could show you a sort of electrocardiogram documenting what was happening to me when I was reading Maylis de Kerangal's novel. Then you would know exactly when I wept. When my heart was missing a beat. When I was profoundly moved. When I howled noiselessly. When I felt totally mesmerized by Maylis de Kerangal's words.
Speaking of words, Marcel Proust was trying to find the lost time, while Maylis de Kerangal sets sail on other mission: she searches for the language which can express the most tragic feelings you can imagine. In my opinion the mission has been accomplished in an enthralling way. Without any monumental words, any marble pathos, any cheap sentimentalism. The beauty of the writing blends with enormous empathy and tact here.
I can't promise you will be as much enchanted as I have been. You might find de Kerangal's style annoying. I know that some readers do. But if you love it as much as I do, be prepared for the inner conflict: you will want this book to last forever and at the same time you won't be able to put it down. At least that's what has been happening to me for the last few days.
While I was reading 'The Heart', I was listening to Loreena McKennitt almost all the time. I didn't pay much attention to the lyrics as I was focused on the novel. Completely sucked by the novel, to be exact. Suddenly I realized that the song I was listening to, probably for the twentieth time, was closely related to Maylis de Kerangal's book. I mean 'Dante's Prayer':
'Though we share this humble path, alone
How fragile is the heart
Oh give these clay feet wings to fly
To touch the face of the stars
Breathe life into this feeble heart
Lift this mortal veil of fear
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears
We'll rise above these earthly cares
Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me
Please remember me'
It was like a revelation. The lyrics made me think of Simon and Maylis de Kerangal's novel. It's a coincidence of course but shows you how infatuated I am.
When (if?) my ability to think logically comes back, I will discuss a few more things I would love to tell you about 'The Heart'.
To be continued...
I want to share my thoughts and impressions with you badly. I really do. The problem is I am at a complete loss for words. I think it would be better if, instead of writing a review, I could show you a sort of electrocardiogram documenting what was happening to me when I was reading Maylis de Kerangal's novel. Then you would know exactly when I wept. When my heart was missing a beat. When I was profoundly moved. When I howled noiselessly. When I felt totally mesmerized by Maylis de Kerangal's words.
Speaking of words, Marcel Proust was trying to find the lost time, while Maylis de Kerangal sets sail on other mission: she searches for the language which can express the most tragic feelings you can imagine. In my opinion the mission has been accomplished in an enthralling way. Without any monumental words, any marble pathos, any cheap sentimentalism. The beauty of the writing blends with enormous empathy and tact here.
I can't promise you will be as much enchanted as I have been. You might find de Kerangal's style annoying. I know that some readers do. But if you love it as much as I do, be prepared for the inner conflict: you will want this book to last forever and at the same time you won't be able to put it down. At least that's what has been happening to me for the last few days.
While I was reading 'The Heart', I was listening to Loreena McKennitt almost all the time. I didn't pay much attention to the lyrics as I was focused on the novel. Completely sucked by the novel, to be exact. Suddenly I realized that the song I was listening to, probably for the twentieth time, was closely related to Maylis de Kerangal's book. I mean 'Dante's Prayer':
'Though we share this humble path, alone
How fragile is the heart
Oh give these clay feet wings to fly
To touch the face of the stars
Breathe life into this feeble heart
Lift this mortal veil of fear
Take these crumbled hopes, etched with tears
We'll rise above these earthly cares
Cast your eyes on the ocean
Cast your soul to the sea
When the dark night seems endless
Please remember me
Please remember me'
It was like a revelation. The lyrics made me think of Simon and Maylis de Kerangal's novel. It's a coincidence of course but shows you how infatuated I am.
When (if?) my ability to think logically comes back, I will discuss a few more things I would love to tell you about 'The Heart'.
To be continued...
June 13, 2017
'Maybe there is a scrapyard for organs somewhere, she thinks, removing her jewellery and her watch, some sort of garbage heap where hers will be dumped along with others, evacuated from the hospital through a back door in large trash bags; she imagines a container for organic matter where it will be recycled, transformed into a paste, a flesh compost served by unimaginably cruel heirs of Atreus to their rivals, who enter the palace dining room with hearty appetites - served as pancakes or steak tartare, or slop fed to dogs in huge dishes, or bait for bears and dolphins - and maybe those dolphins will be transformed, after eating the substance, their rubbery skin covered with blonde hair like hers, maybe they will grow long velvety eyelashes.'
If you're a fan of Ali Smith, if you're a fan of Virginia Woolf, you will love this book.
If you're a fan of Ali Smith, if you're a fan of Virginia Woolf, you will love this book.
December 26, 2016
I really enjoyed the basic story concerning all that is involved with organ donation: the loss of loved deceased,telling family and getting permission, harvesting, transport,all the emotional upheaval of all these people and the myriad other issues involved in the process.There was also a varied cast of believable and often compelling characters.
Many reviewers thought the author wrote beautifully. IMO, author took purple prose to the level of aubergine. Majority of book was walls of text. One sentence continues for(I'm not exaggerating) two pages!!!The sentence may have used beautiful language, as attested to by others, I just felt "Oh no, not another ,muddled,sometimes lucid stream of verbiage."
I am the shallow reader that only has to know -character sat in green chair-not where the chair was made, who made it,what color it originally was, what muscles character used to sit- what muscles he or she would use to rise, who sat in the chair in the past and who would sit there next........Especially since this chair has nothing to do with story-nothing!
I am def in minority-but the beauty of this kind of storytelling is not one I appreciate!!
Many reviewers thought the author wrote beautifully. IMO, author took purple prose to the level of aubergine. Majority of book was walls of text. One sentence continues for(I'm not exaggerating) two pages!!!The sentence may have used beautiful language, as attested to by others, I just felt "Oh no, not another ,muddled,sometimes lucid stream of verbiage."
I am the shallow reader that only has to know -character sat in green chair-not where the chair was made, who made it,what color it originally was, what muscles character used to sit- what muscles he or she would use to rise, who sat in the chair in the past and who would sit there next........Especially since this chair has nothing to do with story-nothing!
I am def in minority-but the beauty of this kind of storytelling is not one I appreciate!!
December 13, 2017
3.5 Stars.
Oh My....what to say. One minute I'm glued to the pages and the next I'm wondering why in the world the author is introducing yet another character....one with a story that went on and on and wasn't (for me) significant to the plot....for what purpose?
Anyway, overall I thought 75% of THE HEART to be extraordinary, informative and one dam fine read....the other 25% a bit tedious.
IT ALL HAPPENS IN 24 HOURS beginning with some early morning surfing fun for three teens that turns deadly bringing shock, unbearable grief and sadness to family and friends of Simon Limbre.
From there, THE HEART takes the reader on a journey of hard decision making....organ donation, and right into the realm of the operating theatre....interesting stuff here! And Whew! how does one ever repay such an infinite gift of life.....
After I turned the last page, my first thought was that I wanted more....more final thoughts from family and friends, more thoughts from the donee, and more of this author's writing, but then I remembered the title THE HEART and thought the ending perfect. 3.5 Stars with a roundup to 4.0.
October 4, 2016
3 stars
My feelings were all over the place for The Heart (or I guess as it's titled on the francophone side of the pond, Réparer les vivants; something about "Heal the Living" doesn't quite resonate in English). Parts of Maylis de Kerangal's short, hyper-stylistic, fictional take on the world of organ transplantation were just amazing; other parts kerflop like an Emergency Organ Transport van's blown-out Michelin.
When she sticks to the core subject (the aftermath of teen surfer Simon Limbres' all-but-fatal van collision, the resulting Kubler-Ross Stages of Grief experienced by his loved ones, the hard choices to be made regarding Simon's comatose, vegetative body, the technical exigencies of organ transfer) the book absolutely soars (so much so that when I heard that there was a big screen adaptation soon to be released, I thought "duh! no brainer! Palme d'Or!") Yet other parts, particularly the back stories of all the people tangentially connected to Simon's plight (especially--though not limited to--Thomas Rémige, a nurse/organ donation coordinator, whose back stories include singing opera and having a near-fetish-like fascination with North African goldfinches) go nowhere. Most of these back stories lend nothing to the story whatsoever, and only serve to muck up the works (with style, sure, but...no thank you.)
Ms. de Kerangal has a fascinating writing style, equal parts frenetic and locked in stasis. Very unsettling, but effective. I would ordinarily say the lack of quotation marks would be a terrible distraction, except that there's almost no dialog: you really don't miss them. Kudos to the translator, Sam Taylor, who I'm sure really had his hands full trying to decipher this chaotic prose and make it sparkle and flow in English.
I'm very curious how the soon-to-be-released film adaptation is going to be received. With just a little tweaking here and there, it just might work cinematically. I wouldn't mind reading anything else from her that's been translated (doesn't seem so at present, though. Most promising-sounding: Dans les rapides, a 2007 fictional tribute to Blondie and Kate Bush. Yum!)
My feelings were all over the place for The Heart (or I guess as it's titled on the francophone side of the pond, Réparer les vivants; something about "Heal the Living" doesn't quite resonate in English). Parts of Maylis de Kerangal's short, hyper-stylistic, fictional take on the world of organ transplantation were just amazing; other parts kerflop like an Emergency Organ Transport van's blown-out Michelin.
When she sticks to the core subject (the aftermath of teen surfer Simon Limbres' all-but-fatal van collision, the resulting Kubler-Ross Stages of Grief experienced by his loved ones, the hard choices to be made regarding Simon's comatose, vegetative body, the technical exigencies of organ transfer) the book absolutely soars (so much so that when I heard that there was a big screen adaptation soon to be released, I thought "duh! no brainer! Palme d'Or!") Yet other parts, particularly the back stories of all the people tangentially connected to Simon's plight (especially--though not limited to--Thomas Rémige, a nurse/organ donation coordinator, whose back stories include singing opera and having a near-fetish-like fascination with North African goldfinches) go nowhere. Most of these back stories lend nothing to the story whatsoever, and only serve to muck up the works (with style, sure, but...no thank you.)
Ms. de Kerangal has a fascinating writing style, equal parts frenetic and locked in stasis. Very unsettling, but effective. I would ordinarily say the lack of quotation marks would be a terrible distraction, except that there's almost no dialog: you really don't miss them. Kudos to the translator, Sam Taylor, who I'm sure really had his hands full trying to decipher this chaotic prose and make it sparkle and flow in English.
I'm very curious how the soon-to-be-released film adaptation is going to be received. With just a little tweaking here and there, it just might work cinematically. I wouldn't mind reading anything else from her that's been translated (doesn't seem so at present, though. Most promising-sounding: Dans les rapides, a 2007 fictional tribute to Blondie and Kate Bush. Yum!)
January 30, 2019
This novel is a great example of how simplicity can be transformed via some kind of alchemy known as "great writing" into high art. I'm reminded of Picasso's "Bouquet of Peace." The story of The Heart is so basic that I almost gave the novel a pass after reading the book jacket--the plot is the stuff of straight-to-video movies--and yet in Kerangal's hands it transforms itself into a story that is exquisitely particular and full of humanity. I'm in awe of her storytelling skills and I'm grateful to her translator Sam Taylor for making this novel easily accessible for me.
In addition to good writing and its deep sense of humaneness, yet another feature that makes The Heart work is its meticulous attention to medical detail. Another work of great skill that I thought of while reading The Heart was "Mrs. Kelly's Monster," a nonfiction feature article written by Jon Franklin that won a Pulitzer in 1979, and that Franklin has graciously republished on his blog, here:
http://jonfranklin.com/stories-2/mrs-...
In addition to good writing and its deep sense of humaneness, yet another feature that makes The Heart work is its meticulous attention to medical detail. Another work of great skill that I thought of while reading The Heart was "Mrs. Kelly's Monster," a nonfiction feature article written by Jon Franklin that won a Pulitzer in 1979, and that Franklin has graciously republished on his blog, here:
http://jonfranklin.com/stories-2/mrs-...
June 4, 2016
To Repair the Living
Kerangal is what you might call a "process writer." Immediately before this, I read and reviewed her earlier novel, Naissance d'un pont. In it, she describes the building of a great bridge, also from start to finish, an enterprise requiring several years and thousands of engineers, workmen, and hangers-on. I described her then as the "Poet of Everything." No detail was too small for her, from the mud of the river bed to the vomit outside a Friday-night bar; no character was too insignificant. All material for her brilliant pyrotechnics, jamming epithet to epithet in jazzy verbal profusion. There is something of the same quality here, its linguistic surprise faithfully captured in the translation by Sam Taylor, but this is much more restrained, more finely focused on the task at hand. Instead of a span of years, we have an exact 24 hours, beginning at dawn on one day and ending at dawn the next. The story could have gone on for longer, but I am sure this precision was important to the author, putting her novel within the classical French unity of time. If Naissance was drunk with possibilities, The Heart is a sober work, dealing as it does with questions of death and life, and their impact on individual human beings.
But Kerangal cannot introduce a simple fact without exploring all the way around it; each new character comes with not so much a back-story as a flash vignette. When Pierre Révol, the ICU doctor first sets eyes on the blotchy face of Cordélia Owl, the nurse assigned to assist him, he immediately imagines an active night with some boyfriend. In fact, he is not far wrong, although the actuality turns out to be more bizarre and more powerful. It is important to the author, in this novel about death, to include constant reminders of life, its unruliness, its splendor, its fragility. Simon Limbres, the donor in this case, is a young surfer, killed in his prime—but the reminder is always there that death could come for any of us, and meanwhile the only thing we can do is to live life, live it as fully as possible.
For all its detailed emphasis on medical technique, ethical issues, and legal procedure, this is a deeply human book. And the character who shines the most brightly for me is the male nurse in charge of coordinating the organ-donation process, Thomas Rémige. Once more, we get the unexpected glimpses into his private life, a youngish gay man, a lover of music. When we first see him, he is standing naked in his apartment, singing:
Thomas Rémige will stay with Simon until the organs have been removed and the surgeons have repaired the necessary incisions. Remaining alone in the operating theater, he will perform his own ritual, stripping, washing, and enshrouding the body, singing to it all the time. Although not yet the end of the book, it confers a benediction whose beauty speaks absolutely to the wonder, humanity, and daring of this astounding novel:
Bury the dead and repair the living.This line from Chekhov's Platonov both explains the French title of this prizewinning novel, Réparer les vivants, and sketches its narrative arc in a single stroke, simple and daring at the same time. For it is the story of a heart transplant, from the last hours and death of the donor to the restoration of the recipient. All taking place within a single day and night. But a very eventful day, involving many people whom we get to know and care about, and the precise working of skilled surgeons within a finely-tuned administrative apparatus. It is one of the best books I have read all year.
Kerangal is what you might call a "process writer." Immediately before this, I read and reviewed her earlier novel, Naissance d'un pont. In it, she describes the building of a great bridge, also from start to finish, an enterprise requiring several years and thousands of engineers, workmen, and hangers-on. I described her then as the "Poet of Everything." No detail was too small for her, from the mud of the river bed to the vomit outside a Friday-night bar; no character was too insignificant. All material for her brilliant pyrotechnics, jamming epithet to epithet in jazzy verbal profusion. There is something of the same quality here, its linguistic surprise faithfully captured in the translation by Sam Taylor, but this is much more restrained, more finely focused on the task at hand. Instead of a span of years, we have an exact 24 hours, beginning at dawn on one day and ending at dawn the next. The story could have gone on for longer, but I am sure this precision was important to the author, putting her novel within the classical French unity of time. If Naissance was drunk with possibilities, The Heart is a sober work, dealing as it does with questions of death and life, and their impact on individual human beings.
But Kerangal cannot introduce a simple fact without exploring all the way around it; each new character comes with not so much a back-story as a flash vignette. When Pierre Révol, the ICU doctor first sets eyes on the blotchy face of Cordélia Owl, the nurse assigned to assist him, he immediately imagines an active night with some boyfriend. In fact, he is not far wrong, although the actuality turns out to be more bizarre and more powerful. It is important to the author, in this novel about death, to include constant reminders of life, its unruliness, its splendor, its fragility. Simon Limbres, the donor in this case, is a young surfer, killed in his prime—but the reminder is always there that death could come for any of us, and meanwhile the only thing we can do is to live life, live it as fully as possible.
For all its detailed emphasis on medical technique, ethical issues, and legal procedure, this is a deeply human book. And the character who shines the most brightly for me is the male nurse in charge of coordinating the organ-donation process, Thomas Rémige. Once more, we get the unexpected glimpses into his private life, a youngish gay man, a lover of music. When we first see him, he is standing naked in his apartment, singing:
Watching this scene, it would be possible to draw an analogy with the sun salutation or the morning chants of monks and nuns, the same lyricizing of the dawn. You might imagine such a ritual to be aimed at the maintenance and conservation of the body—like drinking a glass of cool water, brushing your teeth, unrolling a rubber mat in front of the television to do floor exercises—but for Thomas Rémige it is something else altogether: an exploration of self—the voice as a probe infiltrating his body and transmitting to the outside world echoes of everything that animates it. The voice as stethoscope.Our coordinator is a singer, so what? But no, we shall see that Thomas's care and gentleness will be essential to who he is, as he listens sympathetically to the boy's separated parents as they gradually come to an acceptance of the situation and, just possibly, to a reconciliation with one another. And the music will be important too, as a symbol and something more. By this time, I was used to Maylis de Kerangal's tendency to explore every by-road that she passes, but nothing prepared me for the extraordinary flashback chapter just over halfway through the book in which Thomas visits his partner's cousin in Algiers to buy a rare goldfinch. It has nothing directly to do with the story, but at the same time it is essential, not only as a symbol of the preservation of life and the life spirit, but also as an intermezzo, a palate-cleanser, at the exact moment when the focus shifts from the donor to the possible recipient.
Thomas Rémige will stay with Simon until the organs have been removed and the surgeons have repaired the necessary incisions. Remaining alone in the operating theater, he will perform his own ritual, stripping, washing, and enshrouding the body, singing to it all the time. Although not yet the end of the book, it confers a benediction whose beauty speaks absolutely to the wonder, humanity, and daring of this astounding novel:
When it is all gone, the body appears suddenly more naked than ever: a human body catapulted far from humanity, disturbing matter drifting through the magmatic night, through the formless space of non-meaning, an entity to which Thomas's song confers a presence, a new inscription. Because this body, fragmented and divided by life, becomes whole again under the hand that washes it, in the breath of the voice that sings; this body that has suffered something extraordinary is now united with the company of men, with common mortality. It is praised in song, made beautiful.
December 9, 2016
3.5 rounded up because the writing is just fantastic. Despite quite a bit of buzz earlier this year and some positive reviews from trusted GR friends, I was skeptical of this book and almost took a pass. It seemed like a simple Lifetime movie story. Tragic accident, brain death, heart transplant. I was expecting weepy maudlin prose. It is not that at all. It is a simple story but the prose is outstanding and the way the author makes you feel like you ARE the characters shows a real talent. I will definitely look for other works in translation by this author.
September 8, 2023
I've just cleared out my Currently Reading - dumping at least 5 books that I didn't finish and - as they have been on my CR for 5 or 6 months - I can clearly say I felt no need to finish them: Claire of the Sea Light by Edwidge Danticat, or A Frozen Woman by Annie Ernaux - my feelings were numbed with the slow pace of that one. Bear with me folks - I'm talking about the above "fails" because this book, The Heart was something I read all the way to the end, in fact I was propelled through it. There was an immensely strong narrative drive, but does that it make it a "good" book?
There were elements of the writing I disliked - an annoying style repeat was de Kerangal's tendency to overwrite, to drift off into repeated phrasal sentences, full of descriptives, a phrase, followed by a comma, another phrase solidifying the sensation, or item, another comma, another phrase etc. etc. I knew she was doing this to contrast and to create pauses between the dramatic narrative elements - to give her readers a breather maybe, or to give the drama another layer, to lift it into a more sophisticated plane, probing the higher meanings of life and death.
De Kerangal uses detailed and intense landscape descriptions to add emotional dimension, but she also filled in the back stories of Simon, his parents and the other families involved in the accident, giving us their normal activities and relationships with each other. This certainly gave depth to the narrative, but I found some of her more focussed descriptions of the parents' feelings; how they were becoming disconnected from the rest of the human species in their grief - overdone. The descriptive writing erring, I felt, on the side of interfering with the story. Here, however, is the memorable moment, when Marianne and Sean make the decision on their son's behalf to donate his organs.
They get out of the car to go for a walk -let's go outside, Marianne said, opening the door.
***
Winter woods and fields. The ground is a cold soup that slops and sucks at their shoes, the grass crunches, and the cow pies, hardened by frost, are like scattered slabs of black rock. The branches of the poplar trees scratch the sky like talons, and the copses are full of crows as big as chickens. This is all a bit much, Marianne thinks, we're going to freeze to death out here.
Finally they reach a place where they can see the river, the vastness of the sky coming as a shock. They are out of breath, their feet soaked, but they move toward the riverbank, drawn close to the water as if magnetized, stopping only when the field begins to slide slowly into the water, which is black here, tangled with wet branches and decomposing stumps, with the corpses of insects that winter has killed and rotted, a brackish mire, completely still, a fairy-tale pond beyond which the estuary is slow, dull-colored, pale like sage, the fold of a shroud. Crossing it seems possible but dangerous: there are no wooden pontoons here, no boats moored nearby, no kids with pocketfuls of flat rocks come to skim them on the water's surface. . . .
That section continues for another 3/4 separate paragraphs, with a great ugly, blood-red, three-thousand ton, grain ship passing them, moving out to the sea through the estuary. As I read through I realised that the descriptions of winter, of the brackish and rotting winter vegetation and then the great ship passing them, within an arm's length - is very similar to the journey across Acheron - the river that divides the living from the dead. They come to the bank but must allow their son to cross alone... It's good writing.
The other element I disliked was the repeated references to sexual relationships - I suppose she wants to balance death with life; and then the emphasis on high-status, none of her characters are poor. They all fall into the higher-socio-economic class; for example the doctor in charge at the Paris hospital is Emmanuel Harfang from the Harfang dynasty - yes that's correct a whole dynasty of Harfang surgeons - and an intern Alice Harfang who accompanies the Italian, Vertigilio - he is the surgeon at the 'peak of his game' who performs the heart's removal from the donor.
Ok, let us move swiftly to what I did like - I liked immensely that the title of the book - The Heart - is followed through in the structure; the story is about Simon Limbres' heart - and the ending absolutely reveals what a miracle this organ is. It's the most wonderful ending, and we realise that the whole has been building towards this conclusion, this wonderful conclusion where life is literally passed from one human to another, via the amazing skills of a whole dedicated team of surgeons, nurses, administrators, drivers, pilots, interns, managers and more. So this brings me to the second aspect of the book, I really liked. Clearly de Kerangal, has done the research, because she has skilfully woven into the trauma and drama of this book, the whole background of people, organisations, and protocol around the removal and donation of organs from one body to potentially several others.
I particularly liked how we are given Claire's backstory, a woman in her early fifties, who has suffered from a myocardial infection; her life is in constant danger. She has been waiting for a year for a suitable heart, one, with a possible ABO and leukocyte-antigen match; a heart of the right age, size and weight for this woman. We are given her background so that we understand her feelings, attitude and her intense gratitude for being given a second chance. She has three sons and her mother, who rush to the hospital to support her in this frightening ordeal. I think that's something that de Kerangal does which is intensely clever; she never says from Claire's perspective that there is no guarantee that the donor's heart will start again.
We watch this whole process, we're given the time line from when Simon's head hits the windscreen of the van, from when he arrives at the local hospital and the surgeon already knows he is brain dead because they choose not to operate; through the long process by which the parents are informed and pressed for their decision on Simon's behalf about organ donation - to the countdown. All the medical staff know that the body can only maintain the organs for a limited time after brain death - and the point at which the heart is removed - they have four hours in which they can reconnect it with the new living body - the living patient must be called and prepped and operated on within that narrow time-frame - the removal of the sick organ must be carefully coordinated with the arrival of the donor's heart.
I loved all this medical detail, and the responses of the surgeons and nurses and medics to the operations - and then right at the end - it is made absolutely clear that in spite of all the preparations and coordinated teamwork that everything depends on the heart itself - that miracle of the muscle fibres, will they remember how to contract and release once again after being stopped?
If you can forgive de Kerangal some of the excesses, in terms of my negative elements above, then yes, this is an immensely readable book.
There were elements of the writing I disliked - an annoying style repeat was de Kerangal's tendency to overwrite, to drift off into repeated phrasal sentences, full of descriptives, a phrase, followed by a comma, another phrase solidifying the sensation, or item, another comma, another phrase etc. etc. I knew she was doing this to contrast and to create pauses between the dramatic narrative elements - to give her readers a breather maybe, or to give the drama another layer, to lift it into a more sophisticated plane, probing the higher meanings of life and death.
De Kerangal uses detailed and intense landscape descriptions to add emotional dimension, but she also filled in the back stories of Simon, his parents and the other families involved in the accident, giving us their normal activities and relationships with each other. This certainly gave depth to the narrative, but I found some of her more focussed descriptions of the parents' feelings; how they were becoming disconnected from the rest of the human species in their grief - overdone. The descriptive writing erring, I felt, on the side of interfering with the story. Here, however, is the memorable moment, when Marianne and Sean make the decision on their son's behalf to donate his organs.
They get out of the car to go for a walk -let's go outside, Marianne said, opening the door.
***
Winter woods and fields. The ground is a cold soup that slops and sucks at their shoes, the grass crunches, and the cow pies, hardened by frost, are like scattered slabs of black rock. The branches of the poplar trees scratch the sky like talons, and the copses are full of crows as big as chickens. This is all a bit much, Marianne thinks, we're going to freeze to death out here.
Finally they reach a place where they can see the river, the vastness of the sky coming as a shock. They are out of breath, their feet soaked, but they move toward the riverbank, drawn close to the water as if magnetized, stopping only when the field begins to slide slowly into the water, which is black here, tangled with wet branches and decomposing stumps, with the corpses of insects that winter has killed and rotted, a brackish mire, completely still, a fairy-tale pond beyond which the estuary is slow, dull-colored, pale like sage, the fold of a shroud. Crossing it seems possible but dangerous: there are no wooden pontoons here, no boats moored nearby, no kids with pocketfuls of flat rocks come to skim them on the water's surface. . . .
That section continues for another 3/4 separate paragraphs, with a great ugly, blood-red, three-thousand ton, grain ship passing them, moving out to the sea through the estuary. As I read through I realised that the descriptions of winter, of the brackish and rotting winter vegetation and then the great ship passing them, within an arm's length - is very similar to the journey across Acheron - the river that divides the living from the dead. They come to the bank but must allow their son to cross alone... It's good writing.
The other element I disliked was the repeated references to sexual relationships - I suppose she wants to balance death with life; and then the emphasis on high-status, none of her characters are poor. They all fall into the higher-socio-economic class; for example the doctor in charge at the Paris hospital is Emmanuel Harfang from the Harfang dynasty - yes that's correct a whole dynasty of Harfang surgeons - and an intern Alice Harfang who accompanies the Italian, Vertigilio - he is the surgeon at the 'peak of his game' who performs the heart's removal from the donor.
Ok, let us move swiftly to what I did like - I liked immensely that the title of the book - The Heart - is followed through in the structure; the story is about Simon Limbres' heart - and the ending absolutely reveals what a miracle this organ is. It's the most wonderful ending, and we realise that the whole has been building towards this conclusion, this wonderful conclusion where life is literally passed from one human to another, via the amazing skills of a whole dedicated team of surgeons, nurses, administrators, drivers, pilots, interns, managers and more. So this brings me to the second aspect of the book, I really liked. Clearly de Kerangal, has done the research, because she has skilfully woven into the trauma and drama of this book, the whole background of people, organisations, and protocol around the removal and donation of organs from one body to potentially several others.
I particularly liked how we are given Claire's backstory, a woman in her early fifties, who has suffered from a myocardial infection; her life is in constant danger. She has been waiting for a year for a suitable heart, one, with a possible ABO and leukocyte-antigen match; a heart of the right age, size and weight for this woman. We are given her background so that we understand her feelings, attitude and her intense gratitude for being given a second chance. She has three sons and her mother, who rush to the hospital to support her in this frightening ordeal. I think that's something that de Kerangal does which is intensely clever; she never says from Claire's perspective that there is no guarantee that the donor's heart will start again.
We watch this whole process, we're given the time line from when Simon's head hits the windscreen of the van, from when he arrives at the local hospital and the surgeon already knows he is brain dead because they choose not to operate; through the long process by which the parents are informed and pressed for their decision on Simon's behalf about organ donation - to the countdown. All the medical staff know that the body can only maintain the organs for a limited time after brain death - and the point at which the heart is removed - they have four hours in which they can reconnect it with the new living body - the living patient must be called and prepped and operated on within that narrow time-frame - the removal of the sick organ must be carefully coordinated with the arrival of the donor's heart.
I loved all this medical detail, and the responses of the surgeons and nurses and medics to the operations - and then right at the end - it is made absolutely clear that in spite of all the preparations and coordinated teamwork that everything depends on the heart itself - that miracle of the muscle fibres, will they remember how to contract and release once again after being stopped?
If you can forgive de Kerangal some of the excesses, in terms of my negative elements above, then yes, this is an immensely readable book.
February 28, 2024
نویسنده انگار میخواد به خواننده پز بده که ببینید من چقدر کلمات قلمبه سلمبه بلدم!!!!! یه جمله رو که شروع میکنه تا دو صفحه بعد ادامه میدادش!!! یهو از توصیف احساسات پدر و مادر، میپره وسط شبی که پرستار بیمارستان با دوست پسرش گذرونده بود!!! کلماتی که برای توصیف هاش به کار برده خیلی سخت و عجیبن!! مثلا طرف داره در رو باز میکنه بیاد تو بیمارستان بعد جوری صحنه رو توصیف کرده انگار داری منطقالطیر عطار میخونی!! در رو باز کرده به عالم ملکوت!!
واقعاً توصیف کردن یه مرزی داره که نویسنده با سرعت صد کیلومتر بر ساعت ردش کرده!
قشنگ متن پر طمطراق کتاب، موضوع جالبش رو تو خودش غرق کرده!!!
واقعاً توصیف کردن یه مرزی داره که نویسنده با سرعت صد کیلومتر بر ساعت ردش کرده!
قشنگ متن پر طمطراق کتاب، موضوع جالبش رو تو خودش غرق کرده!!!
February 10, 2019
So much has been written about this novel, almost all positive and absolutely justified. I must say that at first I had some trouble with the exuberant prose of De Kerangal. But after a while I saw that this had to do with her attempt to make the impetuous and energetic feeling of the young men surfing at the beginning of the novel almost physically tangible. That is indeed something that also keeps coming back: the prose of De Kerangal is extremely visual and uses powerful sentences to make the drama of what happens tangible, through the thoughts, emotions and actions of individuals, all real people.
In the first place it concerns the parents of the accidented and brain-dead Simon: their panic and desperation is gripping you to the throat. At first glance this contrasts with the cool professionalism of the doctors who know that this 'Simon Limbres' is not only a personal drama but also an ideal case (a young man in perfect health, at the height of his abilities) for organ donation and that so they have to act quickly, and convince the parents to give their permission (which legally isn’t necessary). But here too, De Kerangal knows how to give the doctors and nurses a face and personality that goes beyond their seemingly mechanical actions, and that does not shy away from their petty sides, their obsessions and sometimes their deep loneliness.
Although utterly appealing, this story is no cheap tearjerker, and that is quite an achievement. The characters may lack some psychological depth, but literary-technical this is really an impressive book, especially because of the deliciously long, compound sentences, in which the punctuation is essential to illustrate the intensity of the event. And I am not even talking about the way in which the author illustrates the delicate problems of organ donation (for all parties involved). Maylis The Kerangal is now firmly on my radar.
In the first place it concerns the parents of the accidented and brain-dead Simon: their panic and desperation is gripping you to the throat. At first glance this contrasts with the cool professionalism of the doctors who know that this 'Simon Limbres' is not only a personal drama but also an ideal case (a young man in perfect health, at the height of his abilities) for organ donation and that so they have to act quickly, and convince the parents to give their permission (which legally isn’t necessary). But here too, De Kerangal knows how to give the doctors and nurses a face and personality that goes beyond their seemingly mechanical actions, and that does not shy away from their petty sides, their obsessions and sometimes their deep loneliness.
Although utterly appealing, this story is no cheap tearjerker, and that is quite an achievement. The characters may lack some psychological depth, but literary-technical this is really an impressive book, especially because of the deliciously long, compound sentences, in which the punctuation is essential to illustrate the intensity of the event. And I am not even talking about the way in which the author illustrates the delicate problems of organ donation (for all parties involved). Maylis The Kerangal is now firmly on my radar.
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January 29, 2019Raramente mi è capitato di detestare così tanto la scrittura di un autore
È solo la mia opinione di mediocre lettrice, ma questo libro è mostruoso e non riesco a trovare altro aggettivo per definirlo. Mostruosa è la scrittura di questa autrice che ha la peculiare e mostruosa abilità di infilare similitudini e metafore in ogni riga del testo. Mostruosa è l’inflazione di aggettivi sempre fantasiosi e ricercati, usati per descrivere ogni minimo particolare. Mostruosa è la sua capacità di scrivere interi periodi lunghi anche più pagine. Flusso di pensiero? No, solo flusso di spocchiosa autoreferenzialità: ogni frase è caricata di accostamenti arditi e assurdo pseudolirismo.
Lo stesso concetto è ripetuto e ribadito più volte sfoggiando una creatività nel rigirare la stessa frittata ridicolizzante un testo che ardirebbe trattare un tema molto doloroso.
Mostruosa infine è la furbizia della de Kerengal di descrivere, anche nei minimi particolari, i personaggi meno influenti della storia, spostando l’attenzione del lettore su fatti ordinari che niente aggiungono al romanzo e che però costituiscono un ottimo espediente per allungare un testo il cui materiale, così come pensato dall’autrice, sarebbe stato sufficiente a scrivere al massimo un racconto di qualche decina di pagine.
L’attacco di orticaria che mi ha colto fin dai primi paragrafi mi ha portato a una lettura che, più che del diagonale, ha del verticale.
È solo la mia opinione di mediocre lettrice, ma questo libro è mostruoso e non riesco a trovare altro aggettivo per definirlo. Mostruosa è la scrittura di questa autrice che ha la peculiare e mostruosa abilità di infilare similitudini e metafore in ogni riga del testo. Mostruosa è l’inflazione di aggettivi sempre fantasiosi e ricercati, usati per descrivere ogni minimo particolare. Mostruosa è la sua capacità di scrivere interi periodi lunghi anche più pagine. Flusso di pensiero? No, solo flusso di spocchiosa autoreferenzialità: ogni frase è caricata di accostamenti arditi e assurdo pseudolirismo.
Lo stesso concetto è ripetuto e ribadito più volte sfoggiando una creatività nel rigirare la stessa frittata ridicolizzante un testo che ardirebbe trattare un tema molto doloroso.
Mostruosa infine è la furbizia della de Kerengal di descrivere, anche nei minimi particolari, i personaggi meno influenti della storia, spostando l’attenzione del lettore su fatti ordinari che niente aggiungono al romanzo e che però costituiscono un ottimo espediente per allungare un testo il cui materiale, così come pensato dall’autrice, sarebbe stato sufficiente a scrivere al massimo un racconto di qualche decina di pagine.
L’attacco di orticaria che mi ha colto fin dai primi paragrafi mi ha portato a una lettura che, più che del diagonale, ha del verticale.
March 12, 2016
Premessa: questo romanzo è finalista al Man Booker International Prize, avevo sentito numerosi pareri di lettura positivi (una recensione sul Guardian, in particolare) e mi sembrava che tutti ci avessero versato sopra copiose lacrime d'amore. Non è che sia un cattivo libro. Lo consiglio, anzi. Soprattutto ai più giovani. Ci fanno leggere tante cose brutte, questa non lo è. Ma non è decisamente all'altezza delle mie aspettative. Non dopo aver terminato da pochissimo la lettura di alieni come Capote, poi. Inoltre, questa non è la recensione completa che invece trovate qui (http://bit.ly/1RFvinz)
“Il cuore è la scatola nera di un corpo”
Cosa archivia un cuore umano? Cosa rimane della vita precedente quando un organo migra da un corpo ad un altro?
“Riparare i viventi” vuole raccontare cosa succede al corpo di Simon, ragazzo di diciannove anni con la passione per il surf, quando cade in un coma irreversibile, a seguito di un incidente d’auto. Quello che si vuole suggerire è che niente è irreversibile, tutto migra e si trasforma. Il cuore di Simon potrebbe essere donato per “riparare” un altro essere umano, per dare nuova vita.
Il tema della donazione degli organi è affrontato a partire da chi deve scendere a patti con una vita al limite: il cuore ancora batte, la coscienza però non c’è più. Il romanzo avrebbe dovuto concentrarsi sull’abbandono della convinzione per cui il corpo non è solo il nostro involucro ma è la nostra identità e vederlo alterato quando moriamo (anche se per un’azione nobile), ci sconvolge.
Mi sembra che invece questo resti più che altro un bisbiglio mentre ci si sofferma di più su meccanismi ormai corrosi dalle narrazioni mainstream, che vogliono raccontarci con frasi retoriche cosa sia il dolore della perdita, quando, sono in pochi a riuscire ad avvicinarcisi allo stordimento e al disorientamento che provoca la morte. E questi pochi autori, che sanno parlarci della Morte, non vogliono nemmeno farci capire cosa sia, non cercano definizioni e frasi fatte.
Estrema importanza ha anche la dimensione del tempo. L’elaborazione del lutto è un processo lento, specialmente se avviene nell’ambiente ospedaliero che risponde a ritmi diversi e spesso opposti a quelli della vita del fuori. L’autrice opera una lunga dilatazione temporale, una sorta di piano sequenza che espande la percezione di ogni momento narrativo. Purtroppo questo senso di dilatazione, che ci rende partecipi di ogni dettaglio, non è sempre spontaneo. Si interrompe troppo spesso il corso degli eventi che sembra essere un suppellettile, a supporto della scrittura compiaciuta della scrittrice.
Lo stile è fortemente disequilibrato. Quando la de Kerengal si sofferma sul concreto, è precisa e raffinata. Riesce ad essere lirica parlando di tecnicismi, quando usa il gergo dei surfisti, il lessico dei professionisti, che sia un artista che plasma la materia o un medico che riflette sulla definizione di morte cerebrale. Quando invece punta alla descrizione del dolore, risulta forzatamente poetica e i suoi tentativi si traducono, troppo spesso, in una cascata di frasi paratattiche che vogliono tutte dire la stessa cosa, abbinate al binario sistema di tripla aggettivazione che, ritengo essere - correggetemi se sbaglio - illegale in almeno diciotto stati.
"Loro stessi, fallati, spezzati, divisi".
Lo so che è da infami citare frasi mozzate, tirate fuori dal contesto. Ma è quel che è.
Il problema principale, per me, è la sproporzione retorica. Vi sono momenti inutilmente arzigogolati. Tuttavia, quando invece è necessaria una maggiore drammatizzazione, l’autrice si fa spesso piccina e prosaica e ci vengono restituiti istanti deludenti e depotenziati. Tutti i gesti che i genitori compiono a seguito della morte del figlio, sembrano rituali smorti, sbiaditi, privi di reale autenticità. Non c’è nulla della raffinatezza e della sottigliezza di un Carver (in quel capolavoro che è “una cosa piccola ma buona”), i personaggi sono vittime di automatismi dozzinali (pugni al muro, mani nei capelli, testate sul volante), descritti con artifici retorici banali.
Indugiare continuamente nelle pieghe di ogni istante (sì, sto scimmiottando) è spesso inutile e frustrante per il lettore. Non si traduce infatti in un’epifania,in momento rivelatorio, riflessione illuminante (sì, la scrittrice usa questo sistema di triplette), bensì in una divagazione retorica che non riserva quasi mai sorprese (non è Nabokov). Non è spiacevole, né particolarmente irritante ma non è nemmeno bello. Uno stile che non è al servizio della trama, non serve i personaggi, serve solo il lettore che si compiace di essere trasportato con faciloneria (non smaccata, ma pur sempre faciloneria) nel mare di struggimento e dolore in cui tutti ci crogioliamo (a livello letterario) quando muore un ragazzino di diciannove anni.
La frase che possiede più forza evocativa sul tema, rispetto a tutto il resto del romanzo, è: "seppellire i morti, riparare i viventi". E non l'ha scritta l'autrice ma è una citazione.
“Il cuore è la scatola nera di un corpo”
Cosa archivia un cuore umano? Cosa rimane della vita precedente quando un organo migra da un corpo ad un altro?
“Riparare i viventi” vuole raccontare cosa succede al corpo di Simon, ragazzo di diciannove anni con la passione per il surf, quando cade in un coma irreversibile, a seguito di un incidente d’auto. Quello che si vuole suggerire è che niente è irreversibile, tutto migra e si trasforma. Il cuore di Simon potrebbe essere donato per “riparare” un altro essere umano, per dare nuova vita.
Il tema della donazione degli organi è affrontato a partire da chi deve scendere a patti con una vita al limite: il cuore ancora batte, la coscienza però non c’è più. Il romanzo avrebbe dovuto concentrarsi sull’abbandono della convinzione per cui il corpo non è solo il nostro involucro ma è la nostra identità e vederlo alterato quando moriamo (anche se per un’azione nobile), ci sconvolge.
Mi sembra che invece questo resti più che altro un bisbiglio mentre ci si sofferma di più su meccanismi ormai corrosi dalle narrazioni mainstream, che vogliono raccontarci con frasi retoriche cosa sia il dolore della perdita, quando, sono in pochi a riuscire ad avvicinarcisi allo stordimento e al disorientamento che provoca la morte. E questi pochi autori, che sanno parlarci della Morte, non vogliono nemmeno farci capire cosa sia, non cercano definizioni e frasi fatte.
Estrema importanza ha anche la dimensione del tempo. L’elaborazione del lutto è un processo lento, specialmente se avviene nell’ambiente ospedaliero che risponde a ritmi diversi e spesso opposti a quelli della vita del fuori. L’autrice opera una lunga dilatazione temporale, una sorta di piano sequenza che espande la percezione di ogni momento narrativo. Purtroppo questo senso di dilatazione, che ci rende partecipi di ogni dettaglio, non è sempre spontaneo. Si interrompe troppo spesso il corso degli eventi che sembra essere un suppellettile, a supporto della scrittura compiaciuta della scrittrice.
Lo stile è fortemente disequilibrato. Quando la de Kerengal si sofferma sul concreto, è precisa e raffinata. Riesce ad essere lirica parlando di tecnicismi, quando usa il gergo dei surfisti, il lessico dei professionisti, che sia un artista che plasma la materia o un medico che riflette sulla definizione di morte cerebrale. Quando invece punta alla descrizione del dolore, risulta forzatamente poetica e i suoi tentativi si traducono, troppo spesso, in una cascata di frasi paratattiche che vogliono tutte dire la stessa cosa, abbinate al binario sistema di tripla aggettivazione che, ritengo essere - correggetemi se sbaglio - illegale in almeno diciotto stati.
"Loro stessi, fallati, spezzati, divisi".
Lo so che è da infami citare frasi mozzate, tirate fuori dal contesto. Ma è quel che è.
Il problema principale, per me, è la sproporzione retorica. Vi sono momenti inutilmente arzigogolati. Tuttavia, quando invece è necessaria una maggiore drammatizzazione, l’autrice si fa spesso piccina e prosaica e ci vengono restituiti istanti deludenti e depotenziati. Tutti i gesti che i genitori compiono a seguito della morte del figlio, sembrano rituali smorti, sbiaditi, privi di reale autenticità. Non c’è nulla della raffinatezza e della sottigliezza di un Carver (in quel capolavoro che è “una cosa piccola ma buona”), i personaggi sono vittime di automatismi dozzinali (pugni al muro, mani nei capelli, testate sul volante), descritti con artifici retorici banali.
Indugiare continuamente nelle pieghe di ogni istante (sì, sto scimmiottando) è spesso inutile e frustrante per il lettore. Non si traduce infatti in un’epifania,in momento rivelatorio, riflessione illuminante (sì, la scrittrice usa questo sistema di triplette), bensì in una divagazione retorica che non riserva quasi mai sorprese (non è Nabokov). Non è spiacevole, né particolarmente irritante ma non è nemmeno bello. Uno stile che non è al servizio della trama, non serve i personaggi, serve solo il lettore che si compiace di essere trasportato con faciloneria (non smaccata, ma pur sempre faciloneria) nel mare di struggimento e dolore in cui tutti ci crogioliamo (a livello letterario) quando muore un ragazzino di diciannove anni.
La frase che possiede più forza evocativa sul tema, rispetto a tutto il resto del romanzo, è: "seppellire i morti, riparare i viventi". E non l'ha scritta l'autrice ma è una citazione.
May 31, 2016
One heart, one magnificent heart. The heart in question belongs to Simon Limbres, a 19-year-old boy, not a perfect boy, a passionate surfer who has barely has had the chance to inhabit the person he will become.
In this astoundingly good novel, Malis De Kerangal introduces us to Simon briefly, when he is thrumming with life, surfing on a cold morning with two good friends. Just pages later, he is close to death, the result of a car accident. The effect is jarring: life contrasted with death, risk contrasted with the mundane.
Simon is at the core of those connected by his single beating heart, yet this book is never maudlin or manipulative. In long sentences, written with lyricism and confidence, we meet those who are just a heartbeat away – and they are portrayed in exquisitely precise detail. Marianne, his mother and Sean, his father must grapple with the worst news a parent can ever imagine hearing, with the most potent stew of emotions (anger, disbelief, numbness, all at once). When Marianne calls Sean to inform him, and hears his innocent voice, she thinks of it as “the voice of life before”.
There is Thomas Remige of the Coordinating Committee for Organ and Tissue Removal, the man intimately attuned to life, who sings Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols and revels in the delicate song of his rare Algerian goldfinch. It will fall to him to walk that precarious line between honoring the family’s wishes and honoring life itself by the reuse of the organs. There is the hedonist heart surgeon Virgilio, who is as passionate fan of soccer (and France is about to play Italy) as he is the operating theater. There is Claire, the 51-year-old heart recipient, who is curiously conflicted upon knowing that now, after years of living with no conception of the future, it will open for her through another’s death. We are privy to their most intimate emotions and foibles and they come alive under this author’s exacting tutelage.
Most importantly, this narrative transcends plots and even transcends characters. Maylis De Kerangal is looking at the bigger picture: the ubiquitous symbolism of the heart. There are some strikingly beautiful images, a merging of forever time (the rise and fall of the waves Simon loved) with immediate time, and the gravity of recognizing that the “separation between the living and the dead no longer exists.” Kudos to Sam
In this astoundingly good novel, Malis De Kerangal introduces us to Simon briefly, when he is thrumming with life, surfing on a cold morning with two good friends. Just pages later, he is close to death, the result of a car accident. The effect is jarring: life contrasted with death, risk contrasted with the mundane.
Simon is at the core of those connected by his single beating heart, yet this book is never maudlin or manipulative. In long sentences, written with lyricism and confidence, we meet those who are just a heartbeat away – and they are portrayed in exquisitely precise detail. Marianne, his mother and Sean, his father must grapple with the worst news a parent can ever imagine hearing, with the most potent stew of emotions (anger, disbelief, numbness, all at once). When Marianne calls Sean to inform him, and hears his innocent voice, she thinks of it as “the voice of life before”.
There is Thomas Remige of the Coordinating Committee for Organ and Tissue Removal, the man intimately attuned to life, who sings Benjamin Britten’s A Ceremony of Carols and revels in the delicate song of his rare Algerian goldfinch. It will fall to him to walk that precarious line between honoring the family’s wishes and honoring life itself by the reuse of the organs. There is the hedonist heart surgeon Virgilio, who is as passionate fan of soccer (and France is about to play Italy) as he is the operating theater. There is Claire, the 51-year-old heart recipient, who is curiously conflicted upon knowing that now, after years of living with no conception of the future, it will open for her through another’s death. We are privy to their most intimate emotions and foibles and they come alive under this author’s exacting tutelage.
Most importantly, this narrative transcends plots and even transcends characters. Maylis De Kerangal is looking at the bigger picture: the ubiquitous symbolism of the heart. There are some strikingly beautiful images, a merging of forever time (the rise and fall of the waves Simon loved) with immediate time, and the gravity of recognizing that the “separation between the living and the dead no longer exists.” Kudos to Sam
September 3, 2022
"For Thomas Remige, a clear refusal was worth more than a consent torn from someone in confusion, delivered with forceps, and regretted fifteen days later when people are ravaged by remorse, losing sleep and sinking in sorrow, we have to think of the living, he often says, chewing the end of a match, we have to think of the ones left behind - on the back of his office door, he had taped a photocopied page for Platanov, a play he'd never seen, never read, but this fragment of dialogue between Voinitzev and Triletski, found in a newspaper left lying around at the laundromat, had made him quiver the way the child discovering his fortune quivers, a Charizard in the pack of Pokemon cards, a golden ticket in the chocolate bar. What shall we do, Nicolas? Bury the dead and mend the living."
"Réparer les vivants" by Maylis de Kerangal has rather unusually been rendered into English at the same time in two different translations being translated as "Mend the Living" by Jessica Moore in the UK, which is the edition I've read, and "The Heart" by Sam Taylor in the US.
Each translators has made one ostensibly rather odd decision:
Moore (UK) has chosen to translate the name of the central, albeit passive, character as Simon Limbeau vs. the original Limbres. In the translator's afterword, she explains that character names are very important to de Kerangal. and, in French, Simon's name carries echoes of "limbes", French for limbo hence "Limbeau", albeit not sure I'm convinced, and she hasn't similarly altered other names that work more in the French.
But the US book title - either at Taylor or perhaps the publisher's insistence - is a very odd choice. The original comes from a line from the Chekhov play Platonov as per the opening quote. Taylor also translates the line in the novel as "What shall we do, Nicholas ? Bury the dead and mend the living", so why change the title so something so bland?
Also compare below the opening paragraph, or part of it as the sentence runs on. My immediate impression is that Moore seems to have adopted a more lyrical word choice ("cadence" vs. "rhythm", "waltz" vs "dance", "constricts" vs "tightens", "unrolled" vs. "set in motion"). But her sentence construction has more fidelity to the original - perhaps too much so as Taylor's reads better in English.
Original:
"Ce qu’est le cœur de Simon Limbres, ce cœur humain, depuis que sa cadence s’est accélérée à l’instant de la naissance quand d’autres cœurs au-dehors accéléraient de même, saluant l’événement, ce qu’est ce cœur, ce qui l’a fait bondir, vomir, grossir, valser léger comme une plume ou peser comme une pierre, ce qui l’a étourdi, ce qui l’a fait fondre – l’amour ; ce qu’est le cœur de Simon Limbres, ce qu’il a fi ltré, enregistré, archivé, boîte noire d’un corps de vingt ans, personne ne le sait au juste, seule une image en mouvement créée par ultrason pourrait en renvoyer l’écho, en faire voir la joie qui dilate et la tristesse qui resserre, seul le tracé papier d’un electrocardiogramme déroulé depuis le commencement pourrait en signer la forme, en décrire la dépense et l’effort, l’émotion qui précipite..."
Jessica Moore:
"What it is, Simon Limbeau's heart, this human heart, from the moment of birth when it cadence accelerated while other hearts outside were accelerating too, hailing the event, no one really knows: what it is, this heart, what has made it leap, swell, sicken, waltz light as a feather or weight heavy as a stone, what has stunned it, what has made it melt - love; what it is, Simon Limbeau's heart, what has it filtered, recorded, archived, black box of a twenty-year old body - only a moving image created by ultrasound could echo it, could show the joy that dilates and the sorrow that constricts, only the paper printout of an electrocardiogram, unrolled from the very beginning, could trace the form, could describe the exertion and the effort, the emotion that rushes through...."
Sam Taylor:
"The thing about Simon Limbres’s heart, this human heart, is that, since the moment of his birth, when its rhythm accelerated, as did the other hearts around it, in celebration of the event, the thing is, that this heart, which made him jump, vomit, grow, dance lightly like a feather or weigh heavy as a stone, which made him dizzy with exhilaration and made him melt with love, which filtered, recorded, archived—the black box of a twenty-year-old body—the thing is that nobody really knows it; only a moving image created by ultrasound could echo its sound and shape, could make visible the joy that dilates it and the sadness that tightens it; only the paper trace of an electrocardiogram, set in motion at the very beginning, could draw the shape, describe the exertion, the quickening emotion..."
As for the novel itself, it's the story of those involved in an organ donation in France, where the system works on presumed consent). Simon, a young surfer ("this nomadic humanity with hair discoloured by salt and eternal summer, with washed out eyes") is fatally injured in a van accident on the way back from a session:
"No other surfer came to that spot. No one else approached the parapet to watch them surf. No one saw them leave the water an hour later, worn out, spent shells, legs like jelly, staggering as they crossed the beach back to the parking lot, and back to the van. No one saw their hands and feet, blue with cold and purple with bruises, nor the dry patches that cut their faces, the cracks in the skin at the corners of their lips as their teeth chattered, their jaws trembling continually, like their bodies, all three of them helpless to stop it. No one saw anything, and when they were dressed again—wool underwear beneath pants, layers of sweaters, leather gloves—no one saw them rubbing each other’s backs, unable to say anything but oh God, shit man that was awesome, when they would so have liked to talk about it, describe the rides, immortalize the legend of the session. Shivering, they got in the van and closed the doors. The engine started, and they drove away."
He suffers irreversible brain damage, but crucially his heart carries on beating. As per Mollaret and Goulon's 1959 paper “coma dépassé”, what we would today call brain death, and in the novel's words: "the moment of death is no longer to be considered as the moment the heart stops, but the moment when cerebral function ceases."
The highly lyrical prose (my favourite line, to her mother Simon's young sister "smells like brioche and Haribo"), written in an active present tense, has the effect of a heart beat, sometimes racing ahead, seldom pausing. A language that the novel contrasts with the sterile language of the intensive care unit:
"this language they share, language that banishes the verbose as a waste of time, exiles eloquence and the seduction of words, overdoes nouns, codes and acronyms, language in which to speak signifies above all to describe - in other words, inform a team, gather up all the evidence in order to allow a diagnosis to be made, tests to be ordered, to allow people to treat and to save: power of the succinct."
de Kerangal smuggles in much technical information on organ transplantation and the French system, yet the tone is very far from dry, and the technical details flow naturally into the prose, for example via a description of the bookshelves of the ICU consultant whose job is to diagnose brain death:
"The two tomes of The Hour Our Death by Philippe Ariès, La sculpture du vivant by Jean Claude Ameisen from the Point Sciences collection, a book by Margaret Lock with a two-tone cover illustrating a brain called Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death, an issue of the Neurological Review from 1959 and the crime novel by Mary Higgins Clark Moonlight Becomes You - a book Revol likes, we'll find out later why."
The story also explores the very varied background lives and concerns of those involved, Simon and his surfer friends, his family and girlfriend, the various medical practitioners (e.g. the tangled love life of the ICU nurse, the hallucinogenic recreational drug habit of the ICU consultant, the singing obsession of the organ donor specialist), through to the ultimate recipient of his heart:
"If this is a gift, it's certainly a strange kind, she thinks. There's no giver in this exchange, no one intended to give a gift here, and likewise there is no recipient, because she doesn't have the choice of refusing the organ, she has to receive it if she wants to survive, so what then, what is it? The release pack into circulation of an organ that's still usable, carrying out it's job as a pump?"
But the tale never lingers long on any of them and is always pulled back to the central "character", Simon's body and his still beating heart. A nurse in the room while his organs are "harvested" describes the scene in a way that acts as as a microcosm of the novel: "she focuses on the scene, looks one by one at each of those who are gathered at the table and the inanimate body that is the stunning centre."
The overall effect, is that the detail of both the back stories and the medical technicalities rather wash over the reader in the beat of the novel's flow. But one is left instead with their cumulative and moving effects as a whole. To quote Jessica Moore, de Kerengal's "way is to approach the very tactile, grounded aspects of life in prose that astounds or makes strange, shimmering, beautiful."
Strongly recommended.
"Réparer les vivants" by Maylis de Kerangal has rather unusually been rendered into English at the same time in two different translations being translated as "Mend the Living" by Jessica Moore in the UK, which is the edition I've read, and "The Heart" by Sam Taylor in the US.
Each translators has made one ostensibly rather odd decision:
Moore (UK) has chosen to translate the name of the central, albeit passive, character as Simon Limbeau vs. the original Limbres. In the translator's afterword, she explains that character names are very important to de Kerangal. and, in French, Simon's name carries echoes of "limbes", French for limbo hence "Limbeau", albeit not sure I'm convinced, and she hasn't similarly altered other names that work more in the French.
But the US book title - either at Taylor or perhaps the publisher's insistence - is a very odd choice. The original comes from a line from the Chekhov play Platonov as per the opening quote. Taylor also translates the line in the novel as "What shall we do, Nicholas ? Bury the dead and mend the living", so why change the title so something so bland?
Also compare below the opening paragraph, or part of it as the sentence runs on. My immediate impression is that Moore seems to have adopted a more lyrical word choice ("cadence" vs. "rhythm", "waltz" vs "dance", "constricts" vs "tightens", "unrolled" vs. "set in motion"). But her sentence construction has more fidelity to the original - perhaps too much so as Taylor's reads better in English.
Original:
"Ce qu’est le cœur de Simon Limbres, ce cœur humain, depuis que sa cadence s’est accélérée à l’instant de la naissance quand d’autres cœurs au-dehors accéléraient de même, saluant l’événement, ce qu’est ce cœur, ce qui l’a fait bondir, vomir, grossir, valser léger comme une plume ou peser comme une pierre, ce qui l’a étourdi, ce qui l’a fait fondre – l’amour ; ce qu’est le cœur de Simon Limbres, ce qu’il a fi ltré, enregistré, archivé, boîte noire d’un corps de vingt ans, personne ne le sait au juste, seule une image en mouvement créée par ultrason pourrait en renvoyer l’écho, en faire voir la joie qui dilate et la tristesse qui resserre, seul le tracé papier d’un electrocardiogramme déroulé depuis le commencement pourrait en signer la forme, en décrire la dépense et l’effort, l’émotion qui précipite..."
Jessica Moore:
"What it is, Simon Limbeau's heart, this human heart, from the moment of birth when it cadence accelerated while other hearts outside were accelerating too, hailing the event, no one really knows: what it is, this heart, what has made it leap, swell, sicken, waltz light as a feather or weight heavy as a stone, what has stunned it, what has made it melt - love; what it is, Simon Limbeau's heart, what has it filtered, recorded, archived, black box of a twenty-year old body - only a moving image created by ultrasound could echo it, could show the joy that dilates and the sorrow that constricts, only the paper printout of an electrocardiogram, unrolled from the very beginning, could trace the form, could describe the exertion and the effort, the emotion that rushes through...."
Sam Taylor:
"The thing about Simon Limbres’s heart, this human heart, is that, since the moment of his birth, when its rhythm accelerated, as did the other hearts around it, in celebration of the event, the thing is, that this heart, which made him jump, vomit, grow, dance lightly like a feather or weigh heavy as a stone, which made him dizzy with exhilaration and made him melt with love, which filtered, recorded, archived—the black box of a twenty-year-old body—the thing is that nobody really knows it; only a moving image created by ultrasound could echo its sound and shape, could make visible the joy that dilates it and the sadness that tightens it; only the paper trace of an electrocardiogram, set in motion at the very beginning, could draw the shape, describe the exertion, the quickening emotion..."
As for the novel itself, it's the story of those involved in an organ donation in France, where the system works on presumed consent). Simon, a young surfer ("this nomadic humanity with hair discoloured by salt and eternal summer, with washed out eyes") is fatally injured in a van accident on the way back from a session:
"No other surfer came to that spot. No one else approached the parapet to watch them surf. No one saw them leave the water an hour later, worn out, spent shells, legs like jelly, staggering as they crossed the beach back to the parking lot, and back to the van. No one saw their hands and feet, blue with cold and purple with bruises, nor the dry patches that cut their faces, the cracks in the skin at the corners of their lips as their teeth chattered, their jaws trembling continually, like their bodies, all three of them helpless to stop it. No one saw anything, and when they were dressed again—wool underwear beneath pants, layers of sweaters, leather gloves—no one saw them rubbing each other’s backs, unable to say anything but oh God, shit man that was awesome, when they would so have liked to talk about it, describe the rides, immortalize the legend of the session. Shivering, they got in the van and closed the doors. The engine started, and they drove away."
He suffers irreversible brain damage, but crucially his heart carries on beating. As per Mollaret and Goulon's 1959 paper “coma dépassé”, what we would today call brain death, and in the novel's words: "the moment of death is no longer to be considered as the moment the heart stops, but the moment when cerebral function ceases."
The highly lyrical prose (my favourite line, to her mother Simon's young sister "smells like brioche and Haribo"), written in an active present tense, has the effect of a heart beat, sometimes racing ahead, seldom pausing. A language that the novel contrasts with the sterile language of the intensive care unit:
"this language they share, language that banishes the verbose as a waste of time, exiles eloquence and the seduction of words, overdoes nouns, codes and acronyms, language in which to speak signifies above all to describe - in other words, inform a team, gather up all the evidence in order to allow a diagnosis to be made, tests to be ordered, to allow people to treat and to save: power of the succinct."
de Kerangal smuggles in much technical information on organ transplantation and the French system, yet the tone is very far from dry, and the technical details flow naturally into the prose, for example via a description of the bookshelves of the ICU consultant whose job is to diagnose brain death:
"The two tomes of The Hour Our Death by Philippe Ariès, La sculpture du vivant by Jean Claude Ameisen from the Point Sciences collection, a book by Margaret Lock with a two-tone cover illustrating a brain called Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death, an issue of the Neurological Review from 1959 and the crime novel by Mary Higgins Clark Moonlight Becomes You - a book Revol likes, we'll find out later why."
The story also explores the very varied background lives and concerns of those involved, Simon and his surfer friends, his family and girlfriend, the various medical practitioners (e.g. the tangled love life of the ICU nurse, the hallucinogenic recreational drug habit of the ICU consultant, the singing obsession of the organ donor specialist), through to the ultimate recipient of his heart:
"If this is a gift, it's certainly a strange kind, she thinks. There's no giver in this exchange, no one intended to give a gift here, and likewise there is no recipient, because she doesn't have the choice of refusing the organ, she has to receive it if she wants to survive, so what then, what is it? The release pack into circulation of an organ that's still usable, carrying out it's job as a pump?"
But the tale never lingers long on any of them and is always pulled back to the central "character", Simon's body and his still beating heart. A nurse in the room while his organs are "harvested" describes the scene in a way that acts as as a microcosm of the novel: "she focuses on the scene, looks one by one at each of those who are gathered at the table and the inanimate body that is the stunning centre."
The overall effect, is that the detail of both the back stories and the medical technicalities rather wash over the reader in the beat of the novel's flow. But one is left instead with their cumulative and moving effects as a whole. To quote Jessica Moore, de Kerengal's "way is to approach the very tactile, grounded aspects of life in prose that astounds or makes strange, shimmering, beautiful."
Strongly recommended.
October 12, 2020
Cu frazele lungi și joaca de-a ,,hai să nu respectăm semnele de punctuație" eram obișnuită de la Jón Kalman Stefánsson, care este excepțional. Nu am mai citit niciodată fraze în care să curgă cu atâta fluiditate durerea și complexitatea vieții ca în cărțile lui. Mă așteptam să găsesc și aici ceva asemănător, dar uit mereu că literatura franceza nu m-a impresionat niciodată.
Mi-au plăcut foarte mult subiectul tragic și temele alese (moartea unui copil, vina inexistentă pe care și-o găsesc părinții ulterior, speranța că moartea cerebrală este reversibilă, donarea de organe, dragostea în diferite ipostaze și altele la fel de profunde), dar scriitura m-a obosit pentru că este încărcată de detalii inutile în care se pierde esența, iar faptul că povestea nu are acțiune, ci se axează pe momente, senzații și sentimente, nu ajută de fiecare dată. În schimb, autoarea excelează la crearea atmosferei. De exemplu, când a intrat în scenă medicul care se ocupa de Simon și a deschis ușile spitalului, parcă am simțit mirosul acela specific de medicamente, mizerie, transpirație a oamenilor care așteaptă lângă cei dragi, moarte și speranță.
Aș spune că aspectele care m-au dezamăgit sunt în echilibru cu cele care m-au încântat, astfel că rămâne o lectură pe care o recomand măcar de dragul de a experimenta cu acest flux al conștiinței de care se folosește autoarea. În plus, mi s-a părut bine documentată în privința procesului de donare a organelor. O poveste dramatică și emoționantă, dar de care s-a tras cam mult. Dacă ar fi fost un microroman, ar fi fost mult mai intens. Câteva citate aici: https://bit.ly/34L6l9W.
,,[...] se privesc o fracțiune de secundă, apoi fac un pas și se îmbrățișează, o îmbrățișare de o forță nebună, ca și cum s-ar strivi unul într-altul, cu capetele presate mai să își crape craniul, cu umerii zdrobiți sub greutatea toracelui, cu brațele dureroase din cauza strânsorii, se amestecă în eșarfă, geacă și palton, genul de îmbrățișare pe care o dai pentru a te preface în stâncă în fața ciclonului, pentru a te preface în piatră înainte de a sări în gol, ceva de sfârșit de lume în orice caz, când, în același timp, exact în același timp, e și un gest care îi reconectează unul la celălalt - buzele li se ating -, le subliniază și anulează distanța, iar când se descarcerează, când se relaxează într-un final, buimăciți, istoviți, sunt ca niște naufragiați."
Mi-au plăcut foarte mult subiectul tragic și temele alese (moartea unui copil, vina inexistentă pe care și-o găsesc părinții ulterior, speranța că moartea cerebrală este reversibilă, donarea de organe, dragostea în diferite ipostaze și altele la fel de profunde), dar scriitura m-a obosit pentru că este încărcată de detalii inutile în care se pierde esența, iar faptul că povestea nu are acțiune, ci se axează pe momente, senzații și sentimente, nu ajută de fiecare dată. În schimb, autoarea excelează la crearea atmosferei. De exemplu, când a intrat în scenă medicul care se ocupa de Simon și a deschis ușile spitalului, parcă am simțit mirosul acela specific de medicamente, mizerie, transpirație a oamenilor care așteaptă lângă cei dragi, moarte și speranță.
Aș spune că aspectele care m-au dezamăgit sunt în echilibru cu cele care m-au încântat, astfel că rămâne o lectură pe care o recomand măcar de dragul de a experimenta cu acest flux al conștiinței de care se folosește autoarea. În plus, mi s-a părut bine documentată în privința procesului de donare a organelor. O poveste dramatică și emoționantă, dar de care s-a tras cam mult. Dacă ar fi fost un microroman, ar fi fost mult mai intens. Câteva citate aici: https://bit.ly/34L6l9W.
,,[...] se privesc o fracțiune de secundă, apoi fac un pas și se îmbrățișează, o îmbrățișare de o forță nebună, ca și cum s-ar strivi unul într-altul, cu capetele presate mai să își crape craniul, cu umerii zdrobiți sub greutatea toracelui, cu brațele dureroase din cauza strânsorii, se amestecă în eșarfă, geacă și palton, genul de îmbrățișare pe care o dai pentru a te preface în stâncă în fața ciclonului, pentru a te preface în piatră înainte de a sări în gol, ceva de sfârșit de lume în orice caz, când, în același timp, exact în același timp, e și un gest care îi reconectează unul la celălalt - buzele li se ating -, le subliniază și anulează distanța, iar când se descarcerează, când se relaxează într-un final, buimăciți, istoviți, sunt ca niște naufragiați."
August 8, 2018
Although I've read reviews and seen this book appear often over the last year, and knew I really wanted to read it, I couldn't remember anything about what is was about or why.
It's really down to a consistent feeling and feedback from readers whom I admire and respect, where their brief tweets of encouragement were all that was necessary to ignite the flame of motivation to make me decide that this would be the first #WIT novel I'd read in August 2018.
How to describe it?
There's a clue in the two versions of the English translations, (American and British English versions have different titles and different translators). The novel was originally written in French, and perhaps ironically, one of the characters, a 50 year old woman awaiting a heart transplant in a Parisian hospital, is also a translator.
The American translation (by Sam Taylor) is entitled The Heart and it is indeed a story that follows the heart of a 19 year old youth from the moment his alarm clock rings at 5.50am one early morning, an hour he rarely awakes, as he sets off with two friends on a surfing mission one mid-winter's half-tide, over the next 24 hours, until his body is meticulously prepared to be laid to rest.
The British translation (by Jessica Moore) is entitled Mend the Living, perhaps broader in scope as it references the many who lie with compromised organs, who live in a twilight zone of half-lived lives, waiting to see if their match comes up, knowing it will likely be a sudden, urgent opportunity when it comes, to receive a healthy heart or liver, or kidney from a donor, most likely violently taken from life.
It could also refer to those who facilitate the complex conversations and interventions, those with empathy and sensitivity who broach the subject to parents, not yet able to comprehend let alone accept, what is passing - to those with proficiency, adeptness, who possess a singular ambition to attain perfection in their chosen field, harvesting and transplanting organs.
Mayal de Kengalis writes snapshots of scenes that pass on this one day, entering briefly into the personal lives of all those whose lives or careers mean they have some kind of involvement in the event and what will transpire.
It's like the writer wields a camera, zooming in on the context of the life of each person, the parents, separated, who will be brought together, the girlfriend confused by a long silence, the nurse waiting for a text message from last nights tryst, the female intern following in the family tradition, the Doctor who she will shadow, removing thoughts of the violent passion of the woman he left when his pager went off, and the one who bookends the process, who listens to the questions and requests, who respects the concerns of the living and the dead, the one who sings and is heard.
The translator Jessica Moore refers to her task in translating the authors work, as 'grappling with Maylis's labyrinthe phrases', which can feel like what it it must be like to be an amateur surfer facing the wave, trying and trying again, to find the one that fits, the wave and the rider, the words and the translator. She gives up trying to turn what the author meant into suitable phrases and leaves interpretation to the future, potential reader.
It is an extraordinary novel in it's intricate penetration and portrayal of medical procedure, it's obsession with language, with extending its own vocabulary, its length of phrase, as if we are riding a wave of words, of long sentences strung out across a shoreline, that end with a dumping in the shallows.
In the process of writing the book, the author's own father had a heart attack, which put the writing on hold and sent her thinking to even greater depths:
This is one of those novels that unleashes the mind and sends it off in all kinds of directions, thinking about the impact events have on so many lives, the different callings people have, the incredible developments in medical science, how little we really know and yet how some do seem to know, intuitively and can act in ways that restores our faith in humanity.
A deserving winner of the Wellcome Prize in 2017, a prize that rewards books that illuminate the human experience through its interaction with health, medicine and illness, literature engaging with science and medical themes, the book has also been made into a successful film and two stage productions.
Highly Recommended.
Interview with Maylis de Kerangal
Film Trailer
It's really down to a consistent feeling and feedback from readers whom I admire and respect, where their brief tweets of encouragement were all that was necessary to ignite the flame of motivation to make me decide that this would be the first #WIT novel I'd read in August 2018.
How to describe it?
There's a clue in the two versions of the English translations, (American and British English versions have different titles and different translators). The novel was originally written in French, and perhaps ironically, one of the characters, a 50 year old woman awaiting a heart transplant in a Parisian hospital, is also a translator.
The American translation (by Sam Taylor) is entitled The Heart and it is indeed a story that follows the heart of a 19 year old youth from the moment his alarm clock rings at 5.50am one early morning, an hour he rarely awakes, as he sets off with two friends on a surfing mission one mid-winter's half-tide, over the next 24 hours, until his body is meticulously prepared to be laid to rest.
He lets out a whoop as he takes his first ride, and for a period of time he touches a state of grace - it's horizontal vertigo, he's neck and neck with the world, and as thought issued from it, taken into its flow - space swallows him, crushes him as it liberates him, saturates his muscular fibres, his bronchial tubes, oxygenates his blood; the wave unfolds on a blurred timeline, slow or fast it's impossible to tell, it suspends each second one by one until it finishes pulverised, an organic, senseless mess and it's incredible but after having been battered by pebbles in the froth at the end, Simon Limbeau turns to go straight back out again.
The British translation (by Jessica Moore) is entitled Mend the Living, perhaps broader in scope as it references the many who lie with compromised organs, who live in a twilight zone of half-lived lives, waiting to see if their match comes up, knowing it will likely be a sudden, urgent opportunity when it comes, to receive a healthy heart or liver, or kidney from a donor, most likely violently taken from life.
It could also refer to those who facilitate the complex conversations and interventions, those with empathy and sensitivity who broach the subject to parents, not yet able to comprehend let alone accept, what is passing - to those with proficiency, adeptness, who possess a singular ambition to attain perfection in their chosen field, harvesting and transplanting organs.
Mayal de Kengalis writes snapshots of scenes that pass on this one day, entering briefly into the personal lives of all those whose lives or careers mean they have some kind of involvement in the event and what will transpire.
It's like the writer wields a camera, zooming in on the context of the life of each person, the parents, separated, who will be brought together, the girlfriend confused by a long silence, the nurse waiting for a text message from last nights tryst, the female intern following in the family tradition, the Doctor who she will shadow, removing thoughts of the violent passion of the woman he left when his pager went off, and the one who bookends the process, who listens to the questions and requests, who respects the concerns of the living and the dead, the one who sings and is heard.
Within the hospital, the I.C.U. is a separate space that takes in tangential lives, opaque comas, deaths foretold - it houses those bodies situated exactly at the point between life and death. A domain of hallways and rooms where suspense holds sway.
The translator Jessica Moore refers to her task in translating the authors work, as 'grappling with Maylis's labyrinthe phrases', which can feel like what it it must be like to be an amateur surfer facing the wave, trying and trying again, to find the one that fits, the wave and the rider, the words and the translator. She gives up trying to turn what the author meant into suitable phrases and leaves interpretation to the future, potential reader.
It is an extraordinary novel in it's intricate penetration and portrayal of medical procedure, it's obsession with language, with extending its own vocabulary, its length of phrase, as if we are riding a wave of words, of long sentences strung out across a shoreline, that end with a dumping in the shallows.
In the process of writing the book, the author's own father had a heart attack, which put the writing on hold and sent her thinking to even greater depths:
“A few months later I was in Marseille and I wanted to understand what is a heart. I began to think about its double nature: on the one hand you have an organ in your body and on the other you have a symbol of love. From that time I started to pursue the image of a heart crossing the night from one body to another. It is a simple narrative structure but it’s open to a lot of things. I had the intuition that this book could give form to my intimate experience of death.”
This is one of those novels that unleashes the mind and sends it off in all kinds of directions, thinking about the impact events have on so many lives, the different callings people have, the incredible developments in medical science, how little we really know and yet how some do seem to know, intuitively and can act in ways that restores our faith in humanity.
A deserving winner of the Wellcome Prize in 2017, a prize that rewards books that illuminate the human experience through its interaction with health, medicine and illness, literature engaging with science and medical themes, the book has also been made into a successful film and two stage productions.
Highly Recommended.
Interview with Maylis de Kerangal
Film Trailer
March 10, 2020
koje riječi upotrijebiti kad si potresen do kostiju?
sjajan, izvanserijski roman o transplantaciji srca, ali više o bogatstvu i, ujedno, krhkosti života.
ako si zaboravio da život treba cijeniti, pročitaj.
ako uzimaš svoj život zdravo za gotovo, pročitaj.
pročitaj i ako si ikad razmišljao što će biti s tvojim organima nakon tvoje smrti. ali pročitaj i ako nikad nisi razmišljao o tome.
bilo je teško i držalo me na rubu suza gotovo cijelo vrijeme... ali vrijedilo je.
sjajan, izvanserijski roman o transplantaciji srca, ali više o bogatstvu i, ujedno, krhkosti života.
ako si zaboravio da život treba cijeniti, pročitaj.
ako uzimaš svoj život zdravo za gotovo, pročitaj.
pročitaj i ako si ikad razmišljao što će biti s tvojim organima nakon tvoje smrti. ali pročitaj i ako nikad nisi razmišljao o tome.
bilo je teško i držalo me na rubu suza gotovo cijelo vrijeme... ali vrijedilo je.
March 14, 2021
De levenden herstellen was voor mij het Beste boek van 2015 gevolgd door Muidhond en De onderwaterzwemmer.
Een jonge golfsurfer komt na een auto-ongeluk om het leven. Het verhaal beschrijft de uren voorafgaand aan het ongeluk door de ogen van het slachtoffer en de uren na het ongeluk door de ogen van zijn vader en moeder (die het ziekenhuis bezoeken waar hun zoon kunstmatig in coma wordt gehouden), het medisch personeel dat hem verzorgt en prepareert voor een harttransplantatie en de ontvanger van zijn donorhart.
Dat het verhaal keihard binnenkwam heeft te maken met het verhaal zelf maar vooral met de manier waarop Maylis De Kerangal haar verhaal vertelt. Hoe ze haar woorden kiest, groepeert en in elkaar klikt doet me denken aan de dribbelacties van grote voetballers (als Cruijff, Maradonna en Messi): op het moment dat je verwacht dat De Kerangal haar zin met een punt gaat afsluiten, zet ze een komma en dribbelt ze verder, en deze schijnbeweging maakt ze keer op keer. Haar dribbels zijn functioneel omdat je als lezer meerent en het gevoel hebt dat je buiten adem raakt, net als het personage in wiens hoofd je je op dat moment bevindt.
Is het boek dan één lange rush, een solo van 274 pagina's? Nee, gelukkig niet. Zo nu en dan last De Kerangal een kleine adempauze in, in de vorm van een flashback of een dialoog. De afwisseling in stijl en het grote aantal rijk uitgewerkte personages maakt dit het verpletterendste boek dat ik de afgelopen jaren heb gelezen.
Een jonge golfsurfer komt na een auto-ongeluk om het leven. Het verhaal beschrijft de uren voorafgaand aan het ongeluk door de ogen van het slachtoffer en de uren na het ongeluk door de ogen van zijn vader en moeder (die het ziekenhuis bezoeken waar hun zoon kunstmatig in coma wordt gehouden), het medisch personeel dat hem verzorgt en prepareert voor een harttransplantatie en de ontvanger van zijn donorhart.
Dat het verhaal keihard binnenkwam heeft te maken met het verhaal zelf maar vooral met de manier waarop Maylis De Kerangal haar verhaal vertelt. Hoe ze haar woorden kiest, groepeert en in elkaar klikt doet me denken aan de dribbelacties van grote voetballers (als Cruijff, Maradonna en Messi): op het moment dat je verwacht dat De Kerangal haar zin met een punt gaat afsluiten, zet ze een komma en dribbelt ze verder, en deze schijnbeweging maakt ze keer op keer. Haar dribbels zijn functioneel omdat je als lezer meerent en het gevoel hebt dat je buiten adem raakt, net als het personage in wiens hoofd je je op dat moment bevindt.
Is het boek dan één lange rush, een solo van 274 pagina's? Nee, gelukkig niet. Zo nu en dan last De Kerangal een kleine adempauze in, in de vorm van een flashback of een dialoog. De afwisseling in stijl en het grote aantal rijk uitgewerkte personages maakt dit het verpletterendste boek dat ik de afgelopen jaren heb gelezen.
December 31, 2020
تعمیر زندهها رمانیه که در ۲۳ ساعت و ۵۹ دقیقه اتفاق میوفته و موضوعش پیرامون "اهدا عضو" هست.
کتاب به بررسی نقش افرادی که در این فرایند اهدا عضو به نحوی شرکت دارند میپردازه، از فرد متوفی و خانوادهش تا فرد دریافت کننده و کادر بیمارستان.
چیزی که توی کتاب دوست داشتم:
اینکه کسی قهرمان نبود، خانواده متوفی گیج شدند، منصرف شدند، عصبانی شدند و بهطور کلی توصیفی که ازشون میشد خیلی واقعی بود و حالت قهرمانی که باشه اصلا بچهمو ببرید هر چیشو خواستید بردارید، نداشت!
چیزی که توی کتاب دوست نداشتم:
توضیحاتی در مورد شخصیتها بود که بیش از اندازه به نظر میومد.
مثلا چرا باید من بدونم فرد ایکس رفته پرنده بخره یا در مورد پرنده فروش بهم بگه؟
من معتقدم میتونست درمورد فرایند، احساسات فرد دریافت کننده و... بیشتر صحبت کنه و پروبال بهش بده تا یکسری اطلاعات جانبی در مورد پزشک و پرستار که هیچ تاثیری در روند داستان نداشت.
و این هیچ تاثیری رو جدی میگم بهطوری که من از بعضی فصلها کلا یک صفحه میخوندم ببینم این فرد نقشش چیه و بعد دیگه میرفتم فصل بعد چون اطلاعاتی که از اون فرد داده بود اهمیتی برام نداشت و میخواستم ببینم آخر داستان اهدا چی میشه!
× نمیدونم چرا دو دادم به کتاب، در کل شاید نباید ریتش میکردم. به موضوع خوبی پرداخته بود که من مشابهش رو نخونده بودم، تونسته بود احساسات والدین پسری که فوت کرده رو خیلی خوب نشون بده اما شیوه پرداختش به داستان مورد پسندم نبود.
▪︎ این کتاب توسط بیل گیتس تحسین شده گویا،
در این صورت نتیجه اخلاقیای که میشه گرفت اینهکه من و آقای بیل سلیقه مطالعاتی مشترکی نداریم.
پ.ن: روزی که خبر چاپش رو شنیدم فکر میکردم رمان روانشناسی باشه :))
اینم آخرین ریویوی ۲۰۲۰
کتاب به بررسی نقش افرادی که در این فرایند اهدا عضو به نحوی شرکت دارند میپردازه، از فرد متوفی و خانوادهش تا فرد دریافت کننده و کادر بیمارستان.
چیزی که توی کتاب دوست داشتم:
اینکه کسی قهرمان نبود، خانواده متوفی گیج شدند، منصرف شدند، عصبانی شدند و بهطور کلی توصیفی که ازشون میشد خیلی واقعی بود و حالت قهرمانی که باشه اصلا بچهمو ببرید هر چیشو خواستید بردارید، نداشت!
چیزی که توی کتاب دوست نداشتم:
توضیحاتی در مورد شخصیتها بود که بیش از اندازه به نظر میومد.
مثلا چرا باید من بدونم فرد ایکس رفته پرنده بخره یا در مورد پرنده فروش بهم بگه؟
من معتقدم میتونست درمورد فرایند، احساسات فرد دریافت کننده و... بیشتر صحبت کنه و پروبال بهش بده تا یکسری اطلاعات جانبی در مورد پزشک و پرستار که هیچ تاثیری در روند داستان نداشت.
و این هیچ تاثیری رو جدی میگم بهطوری که من از بعضی فصلها کلا یک صفحه میخوندم ببینم این فرد نقشش چیه و بعد دیگه میرفتم فصل بعد چون اطلاعاتی که از اون فرد داده بود اهمیتی برام نداشت و میخواستم ببینم آخر داستان اهدا چی میشه!
× نمیدونم چرا دو دادم به کتاب، در کل شاید نباید ریتش میکردم. به موضوع خوبی پرداخته بود که من مشابهش رو نخونده بودم، تونسته بود احساسات والدین پسری که فوت کرده رو خیلی خوب نشون بده اما شیوه پرداختش به داستان مورد پسندم نبود.
▪︎ این کتاب توسط بیل گیتس تحسین شده گویا،
در این صورت نتیجه اخلاقیای که میشه گرفت اینهکه من و آقای بیل سلیقه مطالعاتی مشترکی نداریم.
پ.ن: روزی که خبر چاپش رو شنیدم فکر میکردم رمان روانشناسی باشه :))
اینم آخرین ریویوی ۲۰۲۰
May 30, 2016
Pompeux, brouillon, une idée intéressante noyée sous un flot ininterrompu de mots. Je ne suis pas très étonnée que ce roman ait reçu de nombreuses récompenses parce qu'il est plein de grands mots qui impressionnent, mais qui n'apportent rien à l'histoire. Les phrases d'une quinzaine de lignes sont légion et la langue est trop tirée par les cheveux pour être belle. On croise une dizaine de personnages dont on apprend des petits morceaux de vie, rêves et ambitions, avant de passer subitement à quelqu'un d'autre en laissant un goût d'inachevé.
February 8, 2019
Mi ha dato l’idea di un compitino ben svolto sul tema: mostrare lo stato d’animo di genitori a cui è stata appena comunicata la morte del figlio e che devono decidere se dare il consenso alla donazione degli organi; descrivere l’intero processo del prelievo di organo e del nuovo impianto; inserire opportune digressioni per non cadere nell’eccessivo pathos e per rendere digeribili i dettagli medico chirurgici.
Ho detto ben svolto perché in effetti la scrittura è ricercata, accattivante, e la traccia è rispettata in modo diligente, tuttavia le numerose digressioni superflue appaiono artificiose, quando non addirittura improbabili e di dubbio gusto (perdonatemi: la simulazione della visita ginecologica con l’attrice strafiga l’ho trovata letale).
Allo stesso modo ho trovato artificiosa l’attitudine dell’autrice di indugiare spesso in dettagli fuori fuoco, pare quasi autocompiacersi della pura bellezza formale della sua scrittura.
E soprattutto rimane questa sensazione di “compitino”: una freddezza di fondo che non si concilia, a mio parere, con le corde intime che il tema vorrebbe toccare.
Tre stelle meno meno, giusto per l’impegno.
Ho detto ben svolto perché in effetti la scrittura è ricercata, accattivante, e la traccia è rispettata in modo diligente, tuttavia le numerose digressioni superflue appaiono artificiose, quando non addirittura improbabili e di dubbio gusto (perdonatemi: la simulazione della visita ginecologica con l’attrice strafiga l’ho trovata letale).
Allo stesso modo ho trovato artificiosa l’attitudine dell’autrice di indugiare spesso in dettagli fuori fuoco, pare quasi autocompiacersi della pura bellezza formale della sua scrittura.
E soprattutto rimane questa sensazione di “compitino”: una freddezza di fondo che non si concilia, a mio parere, con le corde intime che il tema vorrebbe toccare.
Tre stelle meno meno, giusto per l’impegno.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 23, 2019
Soulagement d'en avoir terminé...
Il y a un travail de longue haleine pour associer au sujet de la transplantation cardiaque une langue spasmodique et nerveuse. C'est acquis. Maintenant, au lecteur de ramer pour fendre la surface épaisse de ce brouet.
Qu'on se prépare à une prose pénétrée et coriace !
Le texte est tout récit et tout point de vue externe. La prose achalandée en mots anglais absolument gratuits. Dans la bouche des jeunes "dans le vent" en début de volume, ça cadre, mais quand s'y mettent joyeusement deux adultes faits, dans un contexte qui ne se prête absolument pas à la badinerie, on fonce tout droit dans le burlesque.
L'extrait concerne un médecin et sa patiente, tous deux parisiens :
"(...) j'ai des questions, des questions sur le donneur, Harfang secoue la tête, l'air de penser qu'elle exagère, elle connaît déjà la réponse. On en a déjà parlé. Mais Claire insiste, ses cheveux blonds forment des crochets contre ses joues, je voudrais pouvoir y penser. Elle ajoute, persuasive : par exemple, d'où vient ce cœur, qui n'est pas parisien ? Harfang la dévisage, fronce les sourcils, comment sait-elle déjà cela? puis consent : Seine-Maritime. Claire ferme les yeux, accélère : male or female? Harfang, du tac au tac, male ; il gagne la porte ouverte sur le couloir, elle l'entend qui s'absente, rouvre les paupières, attendez son âge please. Mais Harfang a disparu."
Maylis de Kerangal, Réparer les vivants (p.276) Editions Gallimard, 2014.
Des passages forts pourtant. Je pense spécialement au chant de Thomas à la fin du prélèvement d'organes, que je trouve sacrément bien amené par la présentation du chirurgien. Malheureusement noyés dans une écriture laxative.
Bref, un sujet fort, un traitement discutable.
Il y a un travail de longue haleine pour associer au sujet de la transplantation cardiaque une langue spasmodique et nerveuse. C'est acquis. Maintenant, au lecteur de ramer pour fendre la surface épaisse de ce brouet.
Qu'on se prépare à une prose pénétrée et coriace !
Le texte est tout récit et tout point de vue externe. La prose achalandée en mots anglais absolument gratuits. Dans la bouche des jeunes "dans le vent" en début de volume, ça cadre, mais quand s'y mettent joyeusement deux adultes faits, dans un contexte qui ne se prête absolument pas à la badinerie, on fonce tout droit dans le burlesque.
L'extrait concerne un médecin et sa patiente, tous deux parisiens :
"(...) j'ai des questions, des questions sur le donneur, Harfang secoue la tête, l'air de penser qu'elle exagère, elle connaît déjà la réponse. On en a déjà parlé. Mais Claire insiste, ses cheveux blonds forment des crochets contre ses joues, je voudrais pouvoir y penser. Elle ajoute, persuasive : par exemple, d'où vient ce cœur, qui n'est pas parisien ? Harfang la dévisage, fronce les sourcils, comment sait-elle déjà cela? puis consent : Seine-Maritime. Claire ferme les yeux, accélère : male or female? Harfang, du tac au tac, male ; il gagne la porte ouverte sur le couloir, elle l'entend qui s'absente, rouvre les paupières, attendez son âge please. Mais Harfang a disparu."
Maylis de Kerangal, Réparer les vivants (p.276) Editions Gallimard, 2014.
Des passages forts pourtant. Je pense spécialement au chant de Thomas à la fin du prélèvement d'organes, que je trouve sacrément bien amené par la présentation du chirurgien. Malheureusement noyés dans une écriture laxative.
Bref, un sujet fort, un traitement discutable.
March 19, 2017
(3.5) Nineteen-year-old Simon Limbeau is declared brain dead in a French hospital after a car accident, but his heart lives on: metaphorically through the love of his parents, sister, friends, and girlfriend; but also literally, in the recipient of his organ donation. Again and again de Kerangal makes a distinction between the physical reality of organs and what they represent: “Simon’s eyes are not just his nervous retina, his taffeta iris, his pupil of pure black in front of the crystalline – they are also his gaze; his skin isn’t just the threaded mesh of his epidermis, his porous cavities – it’s his light and his touch, the living sensors of his body.”
The novel spends time with Simon’s family, especially his mother, but also with the transplant coordinator, the surgeons, the nurse, and so on. I was reminded of ER as well as the French TV show The Returned – this would work really well on screen, and would be a way of avoiding the more off-putting aspects of the author’s style. She writes long, run-on sentences: sometimes half a page, sometimes even stretching to two pages, and stuffs her prose with abstruse vocabulary (or at least that’s how the translator has rendered it), a lot of it medical but some of it simply inaccessible: “emollient conjugality” plus at least a dozen English words I’d never encountered. (Here’s the worst example of unnecessary opacity: “the digitigrade gait of the sardana dancer when he’s nearing a quintal, the corpulence of an ex-obese man calibrating him in thickness, in fullness, but without visible excrescence” – in plain English, the guy is stocky.)
The novel spends time with Simon’s family, especially his mother, but also with the transplant coordinator, the surgeons, the nurse, and so on. I was reminded of ER as well as the French TV show The Returned – this would work really well on screen, and would be a way of avoiding the more off-putting aspects of the author’s style. She writes long, run-on sentences: sometimes half a page, sometimes even stretching to two pages, and stuffs her prose with abstruse vocabulary (or at least that’s how the translator has rendered it), a lot of it medical but some of it simply inaccessible: “emollient conjugality” plus at least a dozen English words I’d never encountered. (Here’s the worst example of unnecessary opacity: “the digitigrade gait of the sardana dancer when he’s nearing a quintal, the corpulence of an ex-obese man calibrating him in thickness, in fullness, but without visible excrescence” – in plain English, the guy is stocky.)
November 3, 2020
De dood treedt in als de hersenfuncties uitgevallen zijn - niet het hart dat blijft pompen, is het criterium om de dood vast te stellen. Hierdoor kan je 'de doden begraven en de levenden herstellen' want het hart kan getransplanteerd worden. Dit proces wordt minitieus beschreven in dit fantastische boek: van beginpunt ( de dood van een jonge surfer) tot eindpunt ( de harttransplantatie bij een literair vertaalster).
Aanvankelijk vergt de stijl van de Kerangal een beetje inspanning - ze schrijft eindeloze zinnen met veel komma's, zinnen die alle kanten lijken uit te gaan maar eens je de stijl gewoon bent, stel je met verbazing vast hoe die ragfijne, gedetailleerde beschrijvingen en uitweidingen in absolute harmonie zijn met de inhoud van het boek.
De hele sfeer rondom deze harttransplantatie is sereen, verstild, afwachtend, aftastend. Die sfeer ontstaat door de zeer precieze analyses van hoe emoties ontstaan en evolueren. Zoals de chirurg hypergeconcentreerd te werk gaat aan de operatietafel, zo ingespannen en nauwlettend registreert Maylis de Kerangal elke gebeurtenis en elke emotie in deze 24 uur.
Misschien zullen andere lezers vinden dat de auteur zich hier en daar vergaloppeerd in te vergezochte vergelijkingen, dat ze soms te uitbundig associeert maar ik ben toch zeer onder de indruk van haar stilistische virtuositeit én van haar talent om droge medische kennis te vertalen naar een enorm meeslepende roman.
Een absolute aanrader!
Aanvankelijk vergt de stijl van de Kerangal een beetje inspanning - ze schrijft eindeloze zinnen met veel komma's, zinnen die alle kanten lijken uit te gaan maar eens je de stijl gewoon bent, stel je met verbazing vast hoe die ragfijne, gedetailleerde beschrijvingen en uitweidingen in absolute harmonie zijn met de inhoud van het boek.
De hele sfeer rondom deze harttransplantatie is sereen, verstild, afwachtend, aftastend. Die sfeer ontstaat door de zeer precieze analyses van hoe emoties ontstaan en evolueren. Zoals de chirurg hypergeconcentreerd te werk gaat aan de operatietafel, zo ingespannen en nauwlettend registreert Maylis de Kerangal elke gebeurtenis en elke emotie in deze 24 uur.
Misschien zullen andere lezers vinden dat de auteur zich hier en daar vergaloppeerd in te vergezochte vergelijkingen, dat ze soms te uitbundig associeert maar ik ben toch zeer onder de indruk van haar stilistische virtuositeit én van haar talent om droge medische kennis te vertalen naar een enorm meeslepende roman.
Een absolute aanrader!
April 9, 2024
I was transfixed by this book. At first, I didn't want to read it. A three hundred word opening sentence? Really? But I was immediately seduced, and continued to be seduced by the atmosphere - the atmospheres - that de Karangal creates as she introduces us to Simon, the boy who loves to surf, but who dies in a road accident as he and his friends return from an early morning assignment with the waves.
He's brain-dead. His perfect body is there for his mother, his father to see, lying on his hospital bed. Thanks to technology, he breathes, as if in dreamless sleep. But he's dead. And his parents need to decide whether his organs can be 'harvested' so others might live.
'How could they even envision it, Simon’s death, when his complexion still flushes pink, and supple, when his nape still bathes in cool blue watercress and he is stretched out with his feet in the gladiolus.'
Now, they must decide now, watching their son calmly 'sleeping'. This is their story. It's the story of the hospital staff, medical and otherwise, charged with his care, coming into work from their messy day-to-day lives. They leave behind them evenings of unsatisfactory sex, of football matches missed, and it's business as usual for them. It's the story of Simon's girlfriend, cross that he's preferred to go surfing than snatch a few more hours with her. It's the story of the woman destined to receive his heart.
The life and death of Simon's heart impacts on so many others, and de Karangal explores this in affecting, poetic language. The emotional consequences overlie the whole book, but she's also researched, quite meticulously, the whole process of transplant from the moment that a patient is recognised as a possible donor, to the time when the heart is successfully transferred to the body of someone else. So many, many people are involved. And it all has to happen so quickly.
This is no medical manual. It's poetic, beautiful, lyrical, rhythmical - and audacious: a quality which seemed to identify the book for me as 'very French'. And I want to single out the quality of the translation. I haven't read the original, but I have read the translator's notes. Moore seems to have successfully been 'sensing in two languages, with the English sentences lain like a transparency over the original'. She has rendered into wonderfully expressive English a work with many of the qualities of French cinema: a narrative alongside an intimate exploration of what it is to be human.
He's brain-dead. His perfect body is there for his mother, his father to see, lying on his hospital bed. Thanks to technology, he breathes, as if in dreamless sleep. But he's dead. And his parents need to decide whether his organs can be 'harvested' so others might live.
'How could they even envision it, Simon’s death, when his complexion still flushes pink, and supple, when his nape still bathes in cool blue watercress and he is stretched out with his feet in the gladiolus.'
Now, they must decide now, watching their son calmly 'sleeping'. This is their story. It's the story of the hospital staff, medical and otherwise, charged with his care, coming into work from their messy day-to-day lives. They leave behind them evenings of unsatisfactory sex, of football matches missed, and it's business as usual for them. It's the story of Simon's girlfriend, cross that he's preferred to go surfing than snatch a few more hours with her. It's the story of the woman destined to receive his heart.
The life and death of Simon's heart impacts on so many others, and de Karangal explores this in affecting, poetic language. The emotional consequences overlie the whole book, but she's also researched, quite meticulously, the whole process of transplant from the moment that a patient is recognised as a possible donor, to the time when the heart is successfully transferred to the body of someone else. So many, many people are involved. And it all has to happen so quickly.
This is no medical manual. It's poetic, beautiful, lyrical, rhythmical - and audacious: a quality which seemed to identify the book for me as 'very French'. And I want to single out the quality of the translation. I haven't read the original, but I have read the translator's notes. Moore seems to have successfully been 'sensing in two languages, with the English sentences lain like a transparency over the original'. She has rendered into wonderfully expressive English a work with many of the qualities of French cinema: a narrative alongside an intimate exploration of what it is to be human.
February 9, 2016
This novel is astonishing, a tour de force. De Kerangal visually, viscerally brings to life...and to death...a teenage boy, Simon Limbres, who is sent into an irreversible coma by a car accident, after an early morning surfing expedition. The boy's brain has shut down, but his heart continues to pump; his skin is warm; his hair still is salty from his dawn surf. Soon, nurses and doctors will monitor him, specialists will remove his organs; transplant surgeons will transfer his strong, still living heart to a woman whose life it will save. First, though, they must clear this with the boy's mother and father (who, though separated, reunite upon this calamity). How can the parents reconcile these two things?: 1)Their child is dead; 2)He looks alive, he breathes.
Maylis De Kerangal's language is painterly and descriptive but masterfully restrained. Even when the emotions she describes are rending, her words are controlled and unsentimental, deepening their strength and pathos. The letters on the page are black and white, but reading them you feel as if you've absorbed them in vivid gouache--cadmium red, ultramarine, sap green-you can picture every room or space De Kerangal puts you in, and every person in it. That said--it is the English version I have read; and I should make it clear, when I praise the language, it is Sam Taylor who has beautifully, effectively, smoothly translated the text I describe.
This is a modern novel, up-to-the-minute, with cell phones, medical monitors, state of the art science (as well as ordinary family scenes, love affairs and quickies, children, tattoos, same-sex partnerships and the social stamp of now) . And yet, Kerangal subtly summons up ur-old forces here, reviving a respect for human grandeur that belongs to antiquity, to myth. As a surgeon stitches Simon's body neatly together , he sings over him reverently, "like the aoidos, the rhapsodist of ancient Greece," unaware he's doing it, moved, perhaps unconsciously, by "his youthful beauty fresh from the waves of the sea, his hair still sticky with salt and curly like those companions of yearning Ulysses."
An unforgettable book, exalting the human body, and spirit, in extremis.
Maylis De Kerangal's language is painterly and descriptive but masterfully restrained. Even when the emotions she describes are rending, her words are controlled and unsentimental, deepening their strength and pathos. The letters on the page are black and white, but reading them you feel as if you've absorbed them in vivid gouache--cadmium red, ultramarine, sap green-you can picture every room or space De Kerangal puts you in, and every person in it. That said--it is the English version I have read; and I should make it clear, when I praise the language, it is Sam Taylor who has beautifully, effectively, smoothly translated the text I describe.
This is a modern novel, up-to-the-minute, with cell phones, medical monitors, state of the art science (as well as ordinary family scenes, love affairs and quickies, children, tattoos, same-sex partnerships and the social stamp of now) . And yet, Kerangal subtly summons up ur-old forces here, reviving a respect for human grandeur that belongs to antiquity, to myth. As a surgeon stitches Simon's body neatly together , he sings over him reverently, "like the aoidos, the rhapsodist of ancient Greece," unaware he's doing it, moved, perhaps unconsciously, by "his youthful beauty fresh from the waves of the sea, his hair still sticky with salt and curly like those companions of yearning Ulysses."
An unforgettable book, exalting the human body, and spirit, in extremis.
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