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A review by egumeny
Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz
3.0
Mostly really enjoyed Anatomy, at least until the last third of the book. The abrupt-ish ending and sudden right turn into the occult was jarring. And as a transplant recipient, the whole "stealing organs from poor people" thing rubbed me the wrong way. So did the "magic potion" explanation of how the surgeries were successful.
Look, I get that this was historical fiction, but painting the transplant process - in any timeframe - as a rich man's supernatural game does a disservice to real-world sentiments. Organ donation, as a concept, is tenuous at best, especially in America; there are already plenty of people who think transplant is sketchy and wrong. Turning practitioners into actual monsters isn't something anyone needs to see. And, honestly? It's kind of lazy writing at this point. Every cheap medical drama does it. Even frigging Netflix's Iron Fist used it as a subplot, and no one wants to be Iron Fist.
This was already a Frankenstein-adjacent story about resurrection men and corpse-stealing; why not just leave it at that? Or why not have the arm- and appendix-stealer be, like, Jack the Ripper or something? A legit madman and not a doctor trying to further medicine. Or, hey, Hazel could've just ... become a doctor. The end. There were plenty of stakes in the story already without dragging a negative depiction of organ transplantation into the mix out of nowhere.
Look, I get that this was historical fiction, but painting the transplant process - in any timeframe - as a rich man's supernatural game does a disservice to real-world sentiments. Organ donation, as a concept, is tenuous at best, especially in America; there are already plenty of people who think transplant is sketchy and wrong. Turning practitioners into actual monsters isn't something anyone needs to see. And, honestly? It's kind of lazy writing at this point. Every cheap medical drama does it. Even frigging Netflix's Iron Fist used it as a subplot, and no one wants to be Iron Fist.
This was already a Frankenstein-adjacent story about resurrection men and corpse-stealing; why not just leave it at that? Or why not have the arm- and appendix-stealer be, like, Jack the Ripper or something? A legit madman and not a doctor trying to further medicine. Or, hey, Hazel could've just ... become a doctor. The end. There were plenty of stakes in the story already without dragging a negative depiction of organ transplantation into the mix out of nowhere.