Mend the Living

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Mend the Living is the story of a heart transplant, centred around Simon Limbeau, the boy whose heart is given, and his family.

Taking place within exactly twenty-four hours, the novel traces the thrill of an early-morning winter surf session, the terrible accident that follows, and all the urgency and compassion of the hospital workers, and shock and grief of Simons family as they negotiate the question of organ donation. Maylis de Kerangal offers glimpses into the thoughts and affective lives of each of the characters: Simon, at the core of the novel; Marianne and Sean, his parents, who have been estranged for some months; Revol, the chief surgeon, music enthusiast, and studier of hallucinogenic plants; Cordelia Owl, the capable new nurse who is reeling from a night spent with her former lover; Thomas Rmige, the hospital coordinator, an opera singer, and aficionado of goldfinches; Virgilio, the silvertongued, light-fingered surgeon; Juliette, Simons girlfriend, who is building a labyrinth inside a Plexiglass case, waiting for Simons call.

The novel also touches upon Claire, the recipient of the heart, whose life has been limited by her condition, who reflects philosophically on what it means to have someone elses heart beating inside you.

Weaving from hospital corridors to the wild waves of the Atlantic, from the narrow streets of Paris to the countryside in Algeria where goldfinches still sing, from the most intimate details of grief within a car in Le Havre to universal considerations of science, compassion, and humanity, Mend the Living is a powerful and vast-ranging book. In her trademark masterful use of language, playing with pacing and tension and a vibrant vocabulary, Maylis de Kerangal gives us a metaphysical adventure that is at once both collective and intimate.

Reviews

Reviews for the French novel

One of the most fascinating writers of her generation ... If this book, for which the author attended a heart transplant, is extremely moving, its partly because she brings us into the interiority of her characters by rendering each persons relationship to time during the twenty-four hours of the story. With Mend the Living, Maylis de Kerangal moves from technical considerations to metaphysics, from exteriority to interiority. She attains ever higher heights.
Le monde des livres

The most outstanding [literary] achievement of the beginning of 2014 ... Mend the Living is Maylis de Kerangals most beautiful work to date ... Far from being simply the story of a heart transplant, this novel is a modern epic that examines our relationship to death, in as much detail as our relationship to language ... A book of such beauty it will take your breath away.
Lire

Maylis de Kerangal holds back (as a good novelist should) from giving answers to these enormous questions around organ donation; but she brings them up with a breathtaking acuity. One thing becomes clear in our reading: human beings are not pure spirit the body also has soul.
Le Figaro littraire

The human heart, our most elemental necessity, is the novels focus, both literally and metaphorically, and the story we enter is told with great heart, and great hopefulness. Written in the grand narrative tradition, the novel reads like a Greek tragedy, like a long, sumptuous passage from Homer. Its concerns are that broad, and that timeless. There is even a Delphic chorus in the form of cheering soccer fans who are both oblivious to the events occurring in the novel and, yet, strangely, provide an accompanying song of life-giving exuberance The novel is beautifully paced, every now and then catching its breath with brief, lighter asides and these asides are welcome because, by now, we, the readers, who have become so immersed in the story, are breathless with grief and hope ourselves.
Vancouver Sun

Maylis de Kerangal navigates perfectly between the epic and the intimate; lets just say that her writing will shake you to your very core.
Elle

From its glorious 300-word first sentence to the stately canopic imagery of its climactic scenes, Mend the Living, beautifully translated from the French by Jessica Moore, mimics the rhythm of the processes it depicts the troughs and peaks of grief and protocol, of skills utilised and acceptance finally achieved.
The Guardian

An unusual and often-ravishing novel Ms. de Kerangals long, rolling sentences pulse along in systolic thumps, each beat punctuated by a comma; theyre packed with emotional intensity and florid imagery The entire hospital in this book pounds with life.
New York Times Books

Moving because of not despite its scientific context The vocabulary fits each characters stream of consciousness, challenging the reader to follow the authors copious research into professional jargons, and teenage slang. a novel that goes to the heart of what it means to be a human being.
The Independent

winning and effective A sophisticated medical drama whose pulse-pounding strength diminishes a touch too quickly.
Kirkus Reviews

This breathless novel has all the beauty of a Greek tragedy. It is also a hymn to creation and a meditation on the relationship between the body and consciousness, life and death.
Figaro

Among the most fascinating writers of her generation. With Mend the Living, Maylis de Kerangal attains even greater heights.
Le Monde

The story unfolds in an intricate lacework of precise detail These characters feel less like fictional creations and more like ordinary people, briefly illuminated in rich language This novel is an exploration not only of death but of life, of humanity and fragility, because the heart is more than the heart.
New York Times blog

De Kerangals novel pulses with life Its clear de Kerangal has done extensive research, and the novel contains a wealth of medical knowledge. But her prose is more than just technical; the writing is uncommonly beautiful and never lacking humanity. This poetic interrogation of our contemporary medical reality affords a view only literature can provide.
Publishers Weekly

Heartbreaking; Ive seldom read a more moving book De Kerangal is a master of momentum, to the extent that when the book ends, the reader feels bereft. She shows that narratives around illness and pain can energize the nobler angels of our nature and make for profoundly lovely art. One longs for more
The Guardian

Ably translated by Jessica Moore long sentences wind across the page, taking in philosophical digressions De Kerangals intellectual flights are balanced out by detailed descriptions of the donation process itself: the various diagnoses, the necessary conversations with the donors grieving family, the hasty delivery of the organs in their chilled containers. Throughout, the author handles this difficult subject with enormous subtlety and tact.
The Independent

Flamboyant writing combined with a tragic subject make the authors fifth novel a searing, unforgettable read [a] gut-wrenching saga De Kerangal explores the contradiction of death enabling life. [an] extraordinary novel that etches itself in the mind
Irish Times

Reading Mend the Living is like stepping into a great ocean of words, all cross-currents and waves, and you just have to dive in and let it take you where it will De Kerangal turns her novels into multi-dimensional, emotional schematics of the situation theyre examining. Events unfold and a fuzzy cloud of words hovers around them ready to illuminate the imperceptible Mend the Living covers a short period of time in the lives of only a few people but it reveals whole realms of experience and meaning within that scope. Reading it is a vertiginous experience that you will not soon forget.
European Literature Network

A work so moving, so richly layered it strikes you less like an object and more like something divine like the heart itself. But its not just the unusual format that makes this novel so remarkable: its the spot-on rhythm of de Kerangals sentences Its not an exaggeration to say de Kerangal has written a masterpiece, a stunning feat on par with modern medicine, the love of a parent, a second chance at life.
TheGazette.com

Mend the Living is the story of a transgression where the heart, liver, lungs, and other organs move beyond their role as sedentary and mortal tools of human mechanics. Here they become travellers on a long journey, and their migration from one body to another brings breath and life.
Hlne Vachon, author of A Matter of Gravity

Author Bio

Maylis de Kerangal is the author of several novels in French. Her earlier work, Naissance dun pont (published in English as Birth of a Bridge), won le prix Mdicis and le prix Franz Hessel in 2010. Her novella Tangente vers lest was the winner of the 2012 Prix Landerneau. In 2014, her fifth novel, Rparer les vivants (published in English as Mend the Living), was released to wide acclaim, winning the Grand Prix RTL-Lire award and the student choice novel of the year from France Culture and Tlrama. de Kerangal lives in Paris, France.

Jessica Moore translated Maylis de Kerangals novel Birth of a Bridge and, earlier, Jean-Franois Beauchemins Turkana Boy. She is the author of Everything, Now, part lyric, part memoir, published in 2012 by Brick Books. She is also a songwriter Beautiful in Red is her debut album.