Anatomy
A Love Story
by Dana Schwartz
read by Mhairi Morrison and Tim Campbell
Macmillan Audio, 2022. 9 hours, 35 minutes.
Review written July 2, 2022, from a library eaudiobook.
Here’s an atmospheric tale set in old Edinburgh and read with a wonderful Scottish accent.
Hazel Sinnett is a young lady who’s always known she’s going to marry her cousin Bernard, a viscount. But she’s also always wanted to be a surgeon, studying her father’s books, even though it’s not a profession for a young lady.
When she tries to get into a demonstration at the Anatomists’ Society of a new gas that will put patients to sleep during surgery, a chance encounter with a Resurrection Man named Jack gives her a way to watch.
Jack Currer makes some money by digging up dead bodies and selling them to the Anatomists’ Society so they can study them. So when Hazel gets thrown out of the Anatomists’ Society because she’s a woman, but is challenged to try the exam anyway — she needs some corpses to study, and Jack can help.
But at the same time, they discover many of the corpses are mutilated, with body parts removed. And some of the Resurrection Men are going missing.
There are so many atmospheric undercurrents and warnings of danger and a touch of romance as Hazel must surmount numerous obstacles in order to become a surgeon.
With excerpts from an old medical textbook, I wondered how much of this was based on fact. Well, a lot of the setting is real, but by the end the reader realizes this isn’t actually quite our world that they live in. It’s certainly a dangerous one, though, and I was on the edge of my seat navigating it with Hazel.
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Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but the views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.
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