Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

"For Thomas Remige, a clear refusal was worth more than a consent torn from someone in confusion, delivered with forceps, and regretted fifteen days later when people are ravaged by remorse, losing sleep and sinking in sorrow, we have to think of the living, he often says, chewing the end of a match, we have to think of the ones left behind - on the back of his office door, he had taped a photocopied page for Platanov, a play he'd never seen, never read, but this fragment of dialogue between Voinitzev and Triletski, found in a newspaper left lying around at the laundromat, had made him quiver the way the child discovering his fortune quivers, a Charizard in the pack of Pokemon cards, a golden ticket in the chocolate bar. What shall we do, Nicolas? Bury the dead and mend the living."

"Réparer les vivants" by Maylis de Kerangal has rather unusually been rendered into English at the same time in two different translations being translated as "Mend the Living" by Jessica Moore in the UK, which is the edition I've read, and "The Heart" by Sam Taylor in the US.

Each translators has made one ostensibly rather odd decision:

Moore (UK) has chosen to translate the name of the central, albeit passive, character as Simon Limbeau vs. the original Limbres. In the translator's afterword, she explains that character names are very important to de Kerangal. and, in French, Simon's name carries echoes of "limbes", French for limbo hence "Limbeau", albeit not sure I'm convinced, and she hasn't similarly altered other names that work more in the French.

But the US book title - either at Taylor or perhaps the publisher's insistence - is a very odd choice. The original comes from a line from the Chekhov play Platonov as per the opening quote. Taylor also translates the line in the novel as "What shall we do, Nicholas ? Bury the dead and mend the living", so why change the title so something so bland?

Also compare below the opening paragraph, or part of it as the sentence runs on. My immediate impression is that Moore seems to have adopted a more lyrical word choice ("cadence" vs. "rhythm", "waltz" vs "dance", "constricts" vs "tightens", "unrolled" vs. "set in motion"). But her sentence construction has more fidelity to the original - perhaps too much so as Taylor's reads better in English.

Original:
"Ce qu’est le cœur de Simon Limbres, ce cœur humain, depuis que sa cadence s’est accélérée à l’instant de la naissance quand d’autres cœurs au-dehors accéléraient de même, saluant l’événement, ce qu’est ce cœur, ce qui l’a fait bondir, vomir, grossir, valser léger comme une plume ou peser comme une pierre, ce qui l’a étourdi, ce qui l’a fait fondre � l’amour ; ce qu’est le cœur de Simon Limbres, ce qu’il a fi ltré, enregistré, archivé, boîte noire d’un corps de vingt ans, personne ne le sait au juste, seule une image en mouvement créée par ultrason pourrait en renvoyer l’écho, en faire voir la joie qui dilate et la tristesse qui resserre, seul le tracé papier d’un electrocardiogramme déroulé depuis le commencement pourrait en signer la forme, en décrire la dépense et l’effort, l’émotion qui précipite..."

Jessica Moore:
"What it is, Simon Limbeau's heart, this human heart, from the moment of birth when it cadence accelerated while other hearts outside were accelerating too, hailing the event, no one really knows: what it is, this heart, what has made it leap, swell, sicken, waltz light as a feather or weight heavy as a stone, what has stunned it, what has made it melt - love; what it is, Simon Limbeau's heart, what has it filtered, recorded, archived, black box of a twenty-year old body - only a moving image created by ultrasound could echo it, could show the joy that dilates and the sorrow that constricts, only the paper printout of an electrocardiogram, unrolled from the very beginning, could trace the form, could describe the exertion and the effort, the emotion that rushes through...."

Sam Taylor:
"The thing about Simon Limbres’s heart, this human heart, is that, since the moment of his birth, when its rhythm accelerated, as did the other hearts around it, in celebration of the event, the thing is, that this heart, which made him jump, vomit, grow, dance lightly like a feather or weigh heavy as a stone, which made him dizzy with exhilaration and made him melt with love, which filtered, recorded, archived—the black box of a twenty-year-old body—the thing is that nobody really knows it; only a moving image created by ultrasound could echo its sound and shape, could make visible the joy that dilates it and the sadness that tightens it; only the paper trace of an electrocardiogram, set in motion at the very beginning, could draw the shape, describe the exertion, the quickening emotion..."

As for the novel itself, it's the story of those involved in an organ donation in France, where the system works on presumed consent). Simon, a young surfer ("this nomadic humanity with hair discoloured by salt and eternal summer, with washed out eyes") is fatally injured in a van accident on the way back from a session:

"No other surfer came to that spot. No one else approached the parapet to watch them surf. No one saw them leave the water an hour later, worn out, spent shells, legs like jelly, staggering as they crossed the beach back to the parking lot, and back to the van. No one saw their hands and feet, blue with cold and purple with bruises, nor the dry patches that cut their faces, the cracks in the skin at the corners of their lips as their teeth chattered, their jaws trembling continually, like their bodies, all three of them helpless to stop it. No one saw anything, and when they were dressed again—wool underwear beneath pants, layers of sweaters, leather gloves—no one saw them rubbing each other’s backs, unable to say anything but oh God, shit man that was awesome, when they would so have liked to talk about it, describe the rides, immortalize the legend of the session. Shivering, they got in the van and closed the doors. The engine started, and they drove away."

He suffers irreversible brain damage, but crucially his heart carries on beating. As per Mollaret and Goulon's 1959 paper “coma dépassé�, what we would today call brain death, and in the novel's words: "the moment of death is no longer to be considered as the moment the heart stops, but the moment when cerebral function ceases."

The highly lyrical prose (my favourite line, to her mother Simon's young sister "smells like brioche and Haribo"), written in an active present tense, has the effect of a heart beat, sometimes racing ahead, seldom pausing. A language that the novel contrasts with the sterile language of the intensive care unit:

"this language they share, language that banishes the verbose as a waste of time, exiles eloquence and the seduction of words, overdoes nouns, codes and acronyms, language in which to speak signifies above all to describe - in other words, inform a team, gather up all the evidence in order to allow a diagnosis to be made, tests to be ordered, to allow people to treat and to save: power of the succinct."

de Kerangal smuggles in much technical information on organ transplantation and the French system, yet the tone is very far from dry, and the technical details flow naturally into the prose, for example via a description of the bookshelves of the ICU consultant whose job is to diagnose brain death:

"The two tomes of The Hour Our Death by Philippe Ariès, La sculpture du vivant by Jean Claude Ameisen from the Point Sciences collection, a book by Margaret Lock with a two-tone cover illustrating a brain called Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death, an issue of the Neurological Review from 1959 and the crime novel by Mary Higgins Clark Moonlight Becomes You - a book Revol likes, we'll find out later why."

(view spoiler)[a thriller, whose plot includes a bell mechanism used to ensure people are not buried alive, relevant for the fear that haunts those asked for permission to have the organs of their loved one, brain dead but still with a beating heart, harvested (hide spoiler)]

The story also explores the very varied background lives and concerns of those involved, Simon and his surfer friends, his family and girlfriend, the various medical practitioners (e.g. the tangled love life of the ICU nurse, the hallucinogenic recreational drug habit of the ICU consultant, the singing obsession of the organ donor specialist), through to the ultimate recipient of his heart:

"If this is a gift, it's certainly a strange kind, she thinks. There's no giver in this exchange, no one intended to give a gift here, and likewise there is no recipient, because she doesn't have the choice of refusing the organ, she has to receive it if she wants to survive, so what then, what is it? The release pack into circulation of an organ that's still usable, carrying out it's job as a pump?"

But the tale never lingers long on any of them and is always pulled back to the central "character", Simon's body and his still beating heart. A nurse in the room while his organs are "harvested" describes the scene in a way that acts as as a microcosm of the novel: "she focuses on the scene, looks one by one at each of those who are gathered at the table and the inanimate body that is the stunning centre."

The overall effect, is that the detail of both the back stories and the medical technicalities rather wash over the reader in the beat of the novel's flow. But one is left instead with their cumulative and moving effects as a whole. To quote Jessica Moore, de Kerengal's "way is to approach the very tactile, grounded aspects of life in prose that astounds or makes strange, shimmering, beautiful."

Strongly recommended.