The Heart, by Maylis de Kerangal, takes place over the 24 hours after a terrible car accident and follows the lives that are touched as a result. You briefly meet the young surfer Simon, just nineteen years old, prior to the accident. The perspectives of his parents, the surgeons, the transplant advocate, nurses, Simon’s girlfriend and the heart recipient all have a voice in this story. This deeply intimate glimpse into the world of heart transplantation is filled with gorgeous, contemplative wordsmithing. This is one of those books where you’ll stop and re-read a passage just for the pleasure of experiencing the words working together on the page.
The Heart is an interesting mix of crafted language. The book is filled with long, heartfelt, rambling sentences, yet it is surgical in its concise medical descriptions. It leaves plenty of space for thoughts and emotions, both yours and the characters’, to find their way through the pages. I felt like I was under a spell as I read this book.
The story is a luminous portrayal of the sacred nature of organ transplantation; it’s a story of grief, generosity, love, hope, and survival. One life has ended, but that one ending will affect many others and give them a chance at new beginnings.
This book was translated from French into English by Sam Taylor, and was the winner of the French-American Foundation Translation Prize. There’s often a sense one gets when reading a translated novel that, well, something is lost in the translation. I did not have that sense when reading this book.
The Heart will stay with you; it will give you pause and leave you to consider your own mortality whilst simultaneously giving you hope for humanity. Yes, there are awful, sad things that happen; but in the end, life goes on. The heart continues to beat.