Suggestions for Three Good Reads

By Linda Rood

I read a stunning book recently: The Heart by French author and philosopher Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Sam Taylor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016). This book was first published in France in 2014 under the title Reparer les Vivants (Heal the Living) and was an instant best seller. It became a one-actor show for theater with the French title in 2015, and a film adaptation, Heal the Living, was released in 2016.

This novel takes place over twenty-four hours and tells the story of the tragic automobile accident that takes the life of young Simon Limbre and the resulting donation of his organs. Although this sounds like a grim tale, it is told with such poetic beauty and precise detail that the result is mesmerizing and moving. Simon is an attractive, athletic young man who goes surfing with his friends one early morning. On their return trip, they have an accident, and Simon suffers an irreparable brain injury.

We meet the emergency room doctors and nurses, Simon’s parents, his girlfriend, the transplant coordinating nurse, the godlike transplant doctors, and the transplant recipient. Writing in beautiful, long and cumulative poetic sentences, the author helps us experience the parents’ grief and confusion as they must decide quickly, before they have been able to accept his death, whether to donate Simon’s organs. We learn how the transplant system works, and we witness the surgeries. We meet the recipient of Simon’s heart, whose life will be saved, but who struggles with the understanding that someone else had to die so that she might live. At first I thought I was reading non-fiction because of the precision of detail, but the depth of characterization soon made me realize otherwise.

In order to write this book, the author consulted with an organ transplant coordinating nurse, and an emergency physician. She learned about Cristal, the software that matches donors and recipients, and she observed a transplant surgery. If you watch TV medical dramas, you will be familiar with some of the details of the transplant process and the urgency that accompanies it. I am fascinated by medical matters, a big fan of the “Diagnosis” column in the New York Times , and so this book had great interest for me to begin with, but the degree to which the book is able to humanize these medical events and their impact on the humans involved is especially powerful. Bill Gates, in his Gates Notes blog, described it as “poetry disguised as a novel.”

I have also lately enjoyed reading two new novels. The first is Vigil Harbor by Julia Glass (Penguin Random House, 2022), a book that I think may resonate with us Vermonters in several ways. It’s set about ten years in the future in a small town on the New England coast which Glass admits is based on her hometown of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Glass imagines what life might be like, in a future world dealing with the consequences of climate change, pandemics, immigration bans, political division, and eco-terrorism. She includes telling details, like the scarcity of certain foods, the disappearance of songbirds, and new government policies, such as the selection of certain cities for protection and the abandonment of others. (Houston will be saved, but Galveston will not. Gloucestor will not be saved.)

The novel is told from the perspectives of nine first-person narrators, which could be annoying, but in Glass’s capable hands, it works. The stories are interconnected, and each segment contains details and events that move the story along so that the character shifts are not disruptive. My favorite character is Margo, the retired English teacher, no surprise. Vigil Harbor sits on the tall cliffs of a peninsula, so it has been protected from the damages of severe storms and tides, and its isolation has made it seem safe to the “jawdroppingly white” population of liberals who “donate rather than demonstrate.” When a couple of outsiders arrive, the townspeople find that they are not as protected as they thought. Although my description might sound dark, that is not true of this novel. Glass is sharply and entertainingly observant about our society, her characters are likeable, and in the end, they are resilient, even heroic. It’s a good read.

The other book I have enjoyed reading is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (Doubleday, 2022), number five on the

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New York Times Bestseller List for fourteen weeks, as I write. Don’t be fooled by the “chick lit” cover design: this is a serious novel about power. Elizabeth Zott, the main character, is a brilliant research chemist and single mother who must battle with the misogyny endemic in the 1950s and 60s. She is assaulted in the workplace and underpaid, ignored for grants; her work is stolen by her male colleagues, and finally she is fired from her lab and must take a job as the TV star of a cooking show for housewives so that she can pay the bills. Refusing to conform to the expectations of her producers, Elizabeth is relentlessly serious, teaching cooking as chemistry and encouraging the self-worth of the women in her audience. Of course, her show is a huge hit, because for once, women find they are being taken seriously. The novel has been reviewed as a revenge comedy, and it is immensely entertaining. Elizabeth is first and foremost a scientist, and her consistent deadpan delivery can be hilarious as she steadfastly refuses to be anything other than herself. An odd but charming (if you like dogs) twist is the character of Six-thirty, Elizabeth’s highly intelligent dog, who is my favorite character. It took me a while to appreciate this book, but trust me, it’s worth it.

That’s it for now. I’m looking forward to reading This is Happiness by Niall Williams, recommended by Carrie Walker, and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, suggested by Elizabeth Catlin. Happy Spring!