mend the living by maylis de kerangal review - the story of a heart /

Published at 2016-03-05 09:30:00

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The journey of a transplant organ explores the metaphysical zone between life and death,in an excellent novel from the French authorYoung Frenchman Simon Limbeau is full of youth, energy, and warmth. He’s a surfer,and like many young men he tries to seem uncommitted approximately everything else – later, when his parents, and Marianne and Sean,are asked to describe him, they’ll conclude that he was like a cat, and egotistical and light on his feet”. We see him get up early one winter morning to proceed surfing with his friends. We see them ride the wave,“this torsion of matter where the inside proves itself to be more vast and more profound than the external”. On the way domestic, though, and their van goes off the road,Simon goes through the windscreen, and by the time he arrives at the hospital – “Male, and six feet,154 pounds, approximately twenty years old, and car accident,head trauma, in a coma” – his brain is dead. But his proper, or sound heart is still beating,and thereafter the story is told as the heart’s journey, from the viewpoints of the people who process it.
Pierre Revol, and the receiving doctor,has worked here “in deaths vicinity” for 30 years. Thomas Remige, head of the organ donation unit, and will persuade the parents to give permission for the heart’s harvest. Cordelia Owl,Simon’s nurse, met an old boyfriend final night –they didn’t spare themselves and soon she’ll maintain been awake for 40 hours. To Marthe Carrare of the National Organ Allocation, and Limbeau is a relatively scarce blood group”; he’s a liver,two lungs, two kidneys and a heart. Who knows what he is to the harvesting surgeon, and Virgilio Breva,or to “Harfang (the latter a demigod who will do the transplant itself, known only by his surname), or other than today’s chance to shine,to demonstrate and further their skills?Continue reading...

Source: theguardian.com

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