Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz

BIBLIOGRAPHIC DETAILS:
Print: COPYRIGHT: January 18, 2022; ISBN 978-1250774156; PUBLISHER: Wednesday Books; PAGES 352; Unabridged (Amazon Hardcover)
Digital: COPYRIGHT: 2021; PUBLISHER: St. Martin’s Publishing Group;: Little, Brown and Company, Hachette Book Group; ISBN 9781250774163; PAGES 338; Unabridged (Overdrive, LAPL, Kindle edition)
*Audio: COPYRIGHT: 1/18/2022; ISBN: 9781250840578; PUBLISHER: MacMillan Audio: DURATION: 09:36:06; PARTS: 8; File Size: 276105 KB; Unabridged (Overdrive LAPL)
Feature Film or tv: Not that I’m aware of.

SERIES: Book 1

CHARACTERS: (Not comprehensive)
Jack Currer – Resurrection Man (Grave Robber)
Hazel Sinnett – 17-year-old with an interest in medicine
Percy Sinnett – Hazel’s younger brother
Bernard Almont – Hazel’s boyfriend
Lord Almont – Bernard’s father
Cook
Dr. Straine – Practicing physician and professor
Dr. Beecham - Practicing physician and professor

SUMMARY/ EVALUATION:
How I picked it: It was late at night and I was searching Overdrive for a nonfiction medical book-this was an unwitting but happy accident.
What’s it about? A 17-year-old girl whose life has been planned out for her realizes that she is interested in medicine and has an aptitude for it, but is soon surprised to discover that the boy she expects to propose to her soon, finds this preoccupation of hers to be inconvenient and a bit embarrassing. Meanwhile, Hazel’s interests lead her into a murky world of mystery and intrigue.
What did I think? It was a fun coincidence that while looking for a book on basic anatomy I fell upon this instead, right after having read a couple of novels with a similar secondary theme of grave robbing. Hazel is an endearing character of strength and charm straddling her own aristocratic world and the impoverished world she yearns to serve and protect. I also enjoyed the discussion at the end of the book between the author and one of the narrators.

AUTHOR:
Dana Schwartz
From Wikipedia:
“Dana Jae Schwartz[1] (born January 7, 1993)[2][3] is an American journalist, screenwriter and author.[4][5] She was previously a correspondent at Entertainment Weekly; she is also the author of four books.[6] She also writes and hosts Noble Blood, a historical weekly podcast for iHeartMedia about the dark side of monarchy.[7”

NARRATOR:
Mhairi Morrison:
From mhairimorrison.com:
“Mhairi is a classically trained actress who attained her BA in Acting at The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland before studying theatre and movement at Jacques Le Coq School of Theatre in Paris. Following her studies she formed a clown company in Paris and performed extensively throughout France.
Moving to London she worked in film, TV and theatre. TV credits include Casualty (BBC), Emo (Channel 4) and Missing (ITV) Feature film credits include Young Adam (with Ewan McGregor, Tilda Swinton and Emily Mortimer) Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (Lone Scherfing), Green Street Hooligans (Lexi Alexander) and O, Jerusalem (with Ian Holm, JJ Feild and Mel Raido). Her theatre work includes performing with Presence Theater Company, Blues For Mister Charlie (Tricycle Theatre), Melody (Traverse and Tron Theatres, Scotland) Faeries (Royal Opera House) and touring internationally with award winning company Blind Summit with the show Low Life.
In 2009 she relocated to Los Angeles and created, produced and released 2 seasons of a comedy show Feathers and Toast currently streaming on Amazon Prime. For Feathers and Toast she won Best Actress in a Comedy (Webseries Mag) and was nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy (ISA Awards) Feathers and Toast has been included in the Official Selection at Sunscreen Festival, Hollyweb Festival, Digital Hollywood Festival, screened as The Grauman’s Chinese Theatre as part of Hollyshorts and received an Honorable Mention at Women In Fashion and Film festival She produces and mimes in her series One Mime at a Time.
Mhairi has worked extensively in physical theatre; mime, puppeteering, clown, mask and recently trained in Mocap with veteran Performance Capture artist and instructor, Neil Newbon and at The MoCap Vaults, Los Angeles.
Mhairi is an award winning voice over artist, narrating audio books as well as voicing commercials, video games and documentaries.
She is a human rights activist and attended the FiSahara Human Rights Film festival in Dakhla refugee camp, in the Sahara Desert along the Western Sahara border. She is a co-founder of the Los Angeles Chapter of Amnesty International.
She divides her time between Scotland and Los Angeles.

Tim Campbell:
From timcampbell.me:
“Tim Campbell is an award winning actor and singer who lives in Los Angeles, CA. He works primarily in audiobook narration and voice over and has narrated hundreds of titles spanning almost every genre. He has won or been nominated for almost every major award in the audiobook industry, including most recently a 2018 Audie, a 2019 Audie (nom), a 2019 Voice Arts Award, and several Independent Audiobook and Audiofile Magazine Earphones awards. Career highlights include Moby Dick (Brilliance Audio), Labarynth (Catherine Coulter), The Phantom of the Opera (Brilliance Audio), The Joe Dillard Legal Thrillers (Tim Campbell/Audible Studios), The Unhuman/Inspector Hobbes series (Findaway), The Mountain (HighBridge) and various short stories and novellas by Neil Gaiman, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Shelley, Rudyard Kipling, HG Wells, Jules Verne, Ken Liu, Helen DeWitt, and many many others. He lived and trained in the UK and Germany, narrates as both an American and a Brit, and has studied performance diction in German, Italian, French, Spanish and Japanese, and Latin. He specializes in accents, dialects, and character work and holds three degrees in theater and music as well as graduating from the esteemed two year Great Books Colloquium of Pepperdine University.
In his other, musical life, Tim sings regularly with the LA Master Chorale, Los Angeles Opera, and in studio sessions for TV and Film. Highlights include principal ensemble in Candide at LA Opera, Courfeyrac in Les Miserables at Fresno Grand Opera, Jud in Oklahoma with Cabrillo Music Theater, and Anthony in Sweeney Todd with Pacific Opera Project and singing on the soundtrack for Star Wars IX: The Rise of Skywalker and films such as Creed 2, Venom, and many others.”

GENRE:
Gothic Romance; Historical Fiction; Young Adult; Medical

SUBJECTS:
Anatomy; Medicine; Romance; Students; Detective; Mystery; Women; Grave Robbers; transplants; immorality of medical studies and practices in the 19th century

LOCATIONS:
Edinburgh, Scotland

TIME FRAME:
1817

DEDICATION:
“To Ian, who has my heart.”

EXCERPT:
““Throw it here,” Munro said from below. Davey tossed him the dress. As soon as the woman’s clothes were back in her empty coffin, Munro pulled himself out of the hole and onto the wet grass. “A’ight,” he said, clapping the dirt from his hands. “Let’s fill it back in and be done with it now.” Munro didn’t say it, but he felt something strange, too, an odd thinness in the still air that made it harder to catch his breath. The candle in the rectory window had gone out.
“You don’t believe she died of the fever, do you?” Davey whispered. The woman’s skin wasn’t pocked or bloody, but the rumors these days were impossible to ignore. If the Roman fever really was back in Edinburgh …
“Course not,” Munro said with certainty. “Don’t be daft.”
Davey exhaled and smiled weakly in the dark. Munro always knew how to make him feel better, to cast away the fears that crept into his brain like rodents in the walls.
Silently, the boys finished their task. The grave was as well covered with soil and weeds as it had been that morning, and the body, stiff with rigor mortis, was in their wheelbarrow, covered by a gray cloak.
Something was moving at the edge of the cemetery, along the low stone wall that ran the kirkyard’s entire east side. Davey and Munro both saw it, and they whipped their heads around to follow its motion, but as soon as their eyes adjusted in the darkness, it was gone.
“Just a dog,” Munro said more confidently than he felt. “Come on. The doctor likes us out back before dawn.”
Davey pushed the cart, and Munro walked alongside him, gripping the handle of his spade tighter than usual. They had almost made it out of the cemetery when three men in cloaks stepped in their path.
“Hello,” the first man said. He was the tallest of the three, and looked even taller because he wore a stovepipe hat.
“Lovely evening,” said the second, a bald man, shorter than the others.
“Perfect for a stroll,” said the third, whose yellow grin was visible behind his mustache even in the darkness.
They weren’t night watchmen, Davey saw. Maybe they were fellow resurrection men.
Munro clearly had the same idea. “Out of our way. She’s ours, get yer own doornail,” he said, stepping in front of Davey and their wheelbarrow. His voice shook only a little.
Davey looked down and saw the gentlemen were all wearing fine leather shoes. No resurrection man wore shoes like that.
The three men laughed together in near unison. “You’re quite right,” said the short man. “And, of course, we wouldn’t dream of calling the night watchmen.” He took a step closer, and Davey saw a length of rope under the sleeve of his cloak.
The next moment was impossibly quick: the three men advanced, and Munro leapt around them and ran at full tilt up the path and toward the city. “Davey!” he shouted, “Davey, run!”
But Davey was frozen, still behind the wheelbarrow, forced to hesitate at that moment by the choice of whether to abandon Penelope Harkness while he watched Munro sprint into a close and disappear. By the time his feet allowed him to follow his friend, it was too late.
“Gotcha,” said the tall man in the hat as he wrapped his meaty hand around Davey’s wrist. “Now, this won’t hurt a bit.” The man took a blade from his pocket.
Davey struggled against his grip, but no matter how he tugged or twisted, he was unable to pull away. The man with the blade ran it delicately along Davey’s forearm, revealing a trail of crimson blood that looked almost black in the darkness.
Davey was too frightened to scream. He watched in silence, with unblinking panicked eyes, as the bald man pulled out a vial filled with something purple and viscous. The man uncorked the vial and extended his arm.
The man with the hat shook his knife over the vial until a single drop of Davey’s blood fell into liquid within. The liquid became dark and then changed color to a brilliant, glowing golden yellow. It illuminated the faces of the three men, who were all smiling now.
“Lovely,” the one with the mustache said.”

RATING:
4 stars

STARTED READING – FINISHED READING
3-19-2023 to 3-21-2023 ( )

Gr 10 Up—Granted a rare opportunity for entry into a surgical program, Hazel teams up with resurrection man Jack
in what begins as a run-of-the-mill corpse collecting scheme that turns into something much more sinister. A Gothic
romance set in 1817 Scotland wrapped in a horrifying and thrilling mystery, chock-full of grit and gore.

Such a satisfying, gothic romance. Great characters, cinematic-like storytelling, and a perfect balance of grim and sweet. I would love to see a continuation. ( )

Hazel engaged to a Viscount is ready to abandon her nobility in order to follow her dream of becoming a surgeon. She meets Jack a grave robber - a resurrection man who supplies bodies to the anatomists.
Mixed with all this is the discovery of a serum for immortality. ( )

Anatomy: a love story is a love story about science and medicine--about anatomy.

Hazel Sinnett lives in the early 1800s where she is expected to wed for money and be content as the lesser gender. Hazel, however, fails to find value in either pursuit. She loves anatomy and only dreams of becoming a doctor. She's actually very lucky, which is where you will have to suspend your disbelief. As a member of a good family, Hazel possesses all she needs monetarily and possession-wise. Her mother rarely acknowledges her except to remind Hazel that she must marry her cousin, the future Viscount. This marriage brings money and prestige. As Hazel has been raised with Bernard, she feels very comfortable around him. Like a brother. She knows this marriage must be her future and expects it. She believes Bernard will allow her to continue studying and pursue becoming a doctor. After all, it's just her cousin and he's always accepted her love. Problem is that he seems to be growing up and behaving as he is expected to behave as a gentleman and Viscount. Hazel, however, isn't following the role assigned to her. She also fails to treat Bernard very well. She dismisses him and often rudely speaks to him. She has no patience to deal with mundane, silly matters like courtship and marriage. Instead, Hazel plans to spend her time studying.

Hazel concocts a plan to become a doctor. She dresses in her dead brother's clothes and joins the Anatomist Society, taking classes to become a doctor upon passing the Physician's Exam. Dr. Beecham, considered one of the most advanced doctors, teaches here. On her first day, Hazel finds herself locked out. A young man, Jack Currer, shows her another way to get in. He would know. He's a resurrections. In other words, he unburies bodies and delivers them to whoever pays. After Dr. Beecham discovers that George Hazelton is really Hazel Sinnett, he makes a deal with her, as he admires her mind. She can attend if she passes the Physician's Exam. She must study on her own. Hazel now studies at home, having Jack bring her bodies. Hazel and Jack find themselves attracted to each other. She cares nothing about social class and finds this resurrectionist a fascinating person, enjoying his company and his energy.

I would say that the novel was perfectly fine. I wasn't ever enthralled. Having a bit of trouble suspending my disbelief that Hazel would have so much freedom to do all that she does, I often felt the plot was too unrealistic for the time period. Also, there's not much of a love story. I like Jack very much, but their scenes are limited. I'll probably listen to the second and final novel as well, but I'm fine with the ending and not re-visiting this storyline. ( )