Dana Schwartz' ANATOMY: A LOVE STORY

Adorable young love positively oozes from every crevice like maggots from a newly-exhumed corpse in podcaster Dana Schwartz' first historical novel. If that seems an unkind, unappealing or unromantic comparison to make, Anatomy: A Love Story might not be for you. But if you're a reader of my blog, that's probably not an issue, is it?

Anyway.

Let's take a moment, first and foremost, to talk about the perfection of this book cover, in which the skirts of our Georgian era heroine are carefully arranged to depict an anatomically accurate-for-being-done-in-textile human heart. Our heroine being a very young woman of the nobility* who wants with all of her (metaphorical) heart to become a surgeon. Not a physician, whose hands are rarely dirtied and who mostly exists to supply different varieties of opium to the well-heeled, but a surgeon. You know, the kind that hacks off diseased limbs and cuts gouty old men for "The Stone" and whatnot. As I said, this book cover is perfection. Chef's kiss. No notes.

Our heroine, Hazel Sinnet, has grown up in an honest-to-goodness Scottish castle, largely unsupervised because she doesn't matter to the family's fortunes so long as she sticks to their plan for her from birth: marry her first cousin, the son of her mother's brother, who is a Viscount. Until then, she's on her own, set to amuse and educate herself. In her father's library. Which is full of old and out-of-date but still fascinating books on medicine and natural history. Well, I mean, really. 

Plus, young Hazel is definitely one of us, as she demonstrates in her reaction to her lady's maid's suggestion that she take a break from her studies and go out and let society see her in a fashionable Edinburgh park, for which she might perhaps take a book. One book!:

One book? One book? Now you're being absurd. What if I finish it? Or what if I find it impossibly dull, what then? What am I supposed to read if I either complete the book I brought or I otherwise discover it to be unreadable? Or what if it no longer holds my attention? Someone could spill tea on it. There. Think of that. Someone could spill tea on my one book, and then I would be marooned. Honestly, Iona, you must use your head.

Life was so different and difficult before ebooks let us tote about a hrair books at all times, was it not? For the record, she ends up taking three books, two medical texts and a brand new novel by an unknown author, simply credited as "A Lady" - Sense and Sensibility. Well, of course it's that one.

But this is a love story. Who is her love? Surely not the cousin she was practically bred for; indeed, he is a boring dandy for all that he's been pretty indulgent about her eccentricities since they were (nobly born, privileged, rich) toddlers naked in the mud together. Who would it be most dramatically inconvenient for a a rich young lady to fall in love with?

How about the guy who procures bodies for Edinburgh Medical College? Who also works all the backdrops and the main curtain at the local theater? That is closed for another bout of Roman Fever (aka malaria) ripping through the city for yet another devastating plague season? And which Hazel fancies she'll be able to cure but only if she gets to study enough bodies of those who have died of it? I mean, how is she not going to fall in love with a Resurrection Man, unless he's really old and ugly and missing bits? Which sturdy young Jack Currer is decidedly not, though few would call him handsome?

Yeah.

But so, the only thing that I didn't completely love about this book was the unnecessary speculative fiction elements tacked on to its ending. A mystery involving the murders of other Resurrection Men and the maiming of various denizens of Edinburgh's scummy, slummy Old Town added quite enough excitement to the plot without [REDACTED], for me, but as ever, your mileage may vary.

Really, I'm pretty delighted that Schwartz, who has made a name for herself condensing the most scandalous or tragic or simply dramatic stories from the lives of the titled nobility of (mostly) Europe, chose to write a book like this instead of just a book version of her podcast. She has employed the skills she honed telling us lurid tales of Elizabeth Bathory and the Mayerling Incident and Sophia Dorotea of Celle to bring us an absolutely charming YA story of frowned-upon young love and the aspirations of a young woman who dares to dream of more than having the best dresses and jewelry to wear at the ball.

 *Ha ha