Skip to main content

Book Review: The Heart by Maylis De Kerangal

Maylis De Kerangal has written an extraordinary book that will continue to haunt readers for a very long time. Written in French and beautifully translated into English by Sam Taylor, ‘The Heart’ tells a rich, poignant story of how the beating heart of a young boy - fatally injured in a car accident and declared brain dead - is transplanted to give new lease of life to a fifty one years old lady whose own heart is on the verge of failure.


The entire story spans a period of 24 hours from the moment the car crash takes place, to that gut wrenching moment when the transplanted heart beats for the very first time in the rib cage of that dying woman. In between, the story captures the passage of time dramatically with each passing moment revealing the searing pain of the parents who must first come to terms with the death of their young son who, just a few hours ago, was alive, surfing the wild sea waves with his friends, and now, lies cold on the operating table, under the bright lights of the overhead lamps, his heart still beating but lack of any brain activity suggesting that he has moved on to some other different world.

The doctors, nurses, and the para-medical staff are working against time, because if the transplant has to succeed, the decision to harvest the heart and other organs must be taken now. The agony of the parents who have to give their consent to harvest the organs is unbearable, but they must dig deep into their reserves and arrive at that moment where they must accept that their son is indeed no more, his beating heart notwithstanding. That sets into motion, a medical protocol, practiced to the point of perfection, where the team of doctors, nurses, and counsellors, together with highly efficient support services, swing into action to harvest multiple organs and disperse them to different locations in France to give hope and life to some other patients waiting for the organs to arrive.

The English translation is simply outstanding, lyrical sentences where clause after clause, pregnant with deep meaning, gradually gathers momentum, exhilarating you, taking you to an ever rising dizzy peak. Hanging there precariously, gasping for breath, trying to hold on to your senses, when you start wondering just how will the writer end it and bring you down - because you know that a sentence cannot absorb so much of beauty - you find yourself slipping, without control, and arrive with a deafening crash to that magical moment of revelation where the writer was all the time trying to navigate you. Or sometimes, the sentences gently purr along, caressing you, enervating your soul, making you feel as if you are floating in a different medium, light like a feather. And, when it ends, with your senses satiated, you cannot help but wonder: what was it that you just experienced? What brilliant writing - meditative, soul lifting, and thoughtful.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should
67 comments
Read more

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike.  This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo
63 comments
Read more

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r
23 comments
Read more