Sounds like the name of a law firm, doesn't it?

I read Jenny Davidson's Heredity over the past couple days and found it to be very compelling. It's not the kind of book you go all happy over (The protagonist has a few self destructive issues,) but that doesn't mean I wasn't quite impressed and more than happy to recommend it to people who like their literature of the smart sort. (It's like I can't say I enjoyed The Not Knowing or Generals Die in Bed either but still want to tell the world about them.) The overall story in Heredity is great but the parallel historical story that the main character slowly uncovers was especially engaging, for me anyway. I'm a sucker for a happy ending and Jenny didn't give me that (all I've got to say is that Elizabeth should never ever forgive her father), but she wrote something so deep and rich and utterly original that I'll forgive the happily every after. (And really, I knew there wasn't going to be a romantic happily ever ever after but that girl part of me does just kick in sometimes and I have no control - none - over it!)

Heredity deals with some fascinating issues of genetics and also quite a bit about medical history. It was the history part, the bits about surgeons stealing bodies in London, that brought to mind two other books I have read and enjoyed: Barbara Hodgson's The Sensualist and Julie Hearn's Sign of the Raven. I reviewed the Hearn book not too long ago and thought it was an outstanding YA historical fantasy. Body snatching is a very real problem in Hearn's book and the lengths to which the characters go to fulfil the last wish of a friend that he not be dissected (and exposed to strangers) is equal parts compassionate and terrifying. Reading Heredity and seeing how far people went to protect their loved ones - and how determined the surgeons were to disinter them regardless of their wishes - was enough to make me feel dirty all over. Yuck, just major yuck!

Hodgson is one of my favorite writers/designers and in The Sensualist she sends her protagonist Helen Martin on a search for a wayward husband that ends up becoming far more about the history of anatomical illustration and the work Andreas Vesalius then it does about marriage. Hodgson includes amazing pictures and artwork in all of her books as supplements to the story and she really did amazing things with The Sensualist. It was the bits in Jenny D's book about old surgical instruments and the various procedures (and injuries) she describes over the course of the narrative that brought Hodgson's book so strongly to mind. I wish Jenny could have had access to the same design wonders as Hodgson - I think Heredity would have been even more impressive with an illustrated component.

All in all though it was a very smart book that made me think - but made me think in a good way (not a toxic book!). I liked it a great deal and I certainly look forward to Dynamite No. 1.