The Resurrectionist is an imperfect but entertaining gothic romantic thriller set in Edinburgh in 1828. A small but avid subset of Smart Bitches may recognize that the term ‘resurrectionist’, when used in Edinburgh in 1828, had a real-life sinister meaning. Yes, my gory gothic Bitches, this was the year that the real-life notorious William Burke and William Hare decided that committing murder and selling the corpses to anatomists was less trouble than digging up bodies. In The Resurrectionist, a naive medical student gets tangled up in their doings.
The narrator is James Willoughby, a classic point-of-entry character. He is the third son of a wealthy family that has fallen upon hard times. James runs off to Edinburgh determined to become a surgeon. He is privileged and naive, and is both shocked and thrilled by the informality he encounters. Still, he loves his studies, shows a talent for dissection, and makes friends with his fellow students. He attends the university but also pays tuition to attend a private school which provides him with the chance to study anatomy and surgery using human cadavers.
Being the sweet summer child that he is, James doesn’t give a second thought to the origin of the corpses he and his fellow students examine in school. But when he runs out of tuition money, he accepts a job under the impression that he is helping to catch grave-robbers. As the reader can clearly see coming, the job actually involves assisting resurrectionists, and he becomes increasingly involved with the trade. He also becomes increasingly enamoured of the fellow anatomist, Aneurin MacKinnon, who introduces him to the trade and its tricks, rules, and unique moral codes (even the most hardened resurrectionist is appalled at the doings of Burke and Hare).
A fun fact I learned from this book: “grave robbing” was a felony punishable by death, but it only specified the removal of the buried person’s effects (clothing, jewelry, etc). James’ associates are not grave robbers. They strip the bodies they steal of clothing and jewels and dump all of that back into the grave, taking only the body itself. Because the body belongs to no one, they hope to avoid prosecution if they are caught. However, they still take great pains to avoid capture. William Burke and William Hare, the famous body snatchers, never snatched a single body from the grave – they were arrested for murder, because they murdered their victims by suffocation and sold the fresh and intact, and therefore highly desirable, corpses for a high price to an anatomist named Robert Knox, killing sixteen people before they were caught.
Back to the book. This book is rife with gore, but not gratuitous gore. There’s a great scene in which James stumbles on the collection of an anatomist and is appalled, followed by another great scene in which Aneurin explains the use of every body part in the room. The atmosphere is fantastic as is the depiction of a person becoming increasingly addicted to the rush of doing the forbidden and getting away with it. There’s also a mounting sense of dread as the small-time resurrectionists come up against a more organized group, not to mention the increasing sense of menace from Burke and Hare. Scenes in which we see how the resurrectionists work are suspenseful and clever and horrifying.
I was not as captivated by the romance between James and Aneurin. This is not primarily a romance, although the romance is a large and important part of the story. Much of the book involves James’ liberation from the constraints of his rich and dysfunctional family and the value they place on conforming to society’s expectations.
Here are some of my problems – they aren’t super spoilery but they do address where we stand by the end of the book so they are tagged.
Show Spoiler
Even though James is forced to confront his privilege again and again, I never felt as though he fully understands it. I also felt that he was manipulated into his resurrectionist activities by Aneurin, and despite a very moving speech by Aneurin later in the story, I never trusted a romance in which one partner has a history of manipulation.
Overall, I left this book with a lot of unanswered questions. To be fair, the book does attempt to tackle these issues to varying degrees, and many readers may be satisfied with the answers they are given, but I felt that twitchy feeling of wanting things to go a little deeper.
- Aneurin is so untrustworthy and manipulative in so many ways that I never fully trusted him as a romantic partner for James.
- James is so naive about his own privilege and the potential consequences of being discovered as Aneurin’s lover that I never fully trusted him as a romantic partner for Aneurin.
- While James and Aneurin are determined to remain together at the end of the book, the details of their romantic future remain uncertain. I wanted to know what a happy ending or a hopeful future might look like for them.
- The moral issue of ‘resurrection’ is never fully explored. James and Aneurin are horrified that their murdered friends are sold to Knox by Burke and Hare, but is it solely because they were murdered or also because their bodies are being used for anatomy? If given the option to donate their own bodies to anatomy schools after death, would James and Aneurin do so? If not, why not? And if not, why do they feel no guilt about exhuming others? And even if they do, why are they so very cavalier about violating the wishes and consent of the dead and their families?
This book was gripping from beginning to end. The sense of place and atmosphere were fantastic. I was certainly entertained. However, the story raises some huge questions, both personal ones for the characters and more overarching philosophical and ethical ones, and then never really unpacks them. It was a light book with a heavier story trapped inside it that never quite made it out.
Incidentally, if you are curious about how bodies are used for scientific and medical study today, I highly recommend the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach. If you are interested in donating your own body to science, you can start by googling medical schools near you. Mine is going to the UC Davis Body Donation Program if it’s in allowable shape when the time comes. In this and many other programs, you can still be an organ donor (in my case, any usable organs will go to recipients and UC Davis will get anything left over). It is something that you have to arrange prior to your death, of course! The experience of researching and arranging this has been very influential in how I regard the role of consent in what happens to the dead.
My decision feels empowering because I chose it after a lot of thought, consultation with my family, and a little bit of paperwork. The experience has made me all the more horrified on behalf of those whose wishes are violated after death, especially since these people are usually impoverished and/or otherwise marginalized and vulnerable populations. For more about this from a Native American viewpoint, try Warrior Girl, Unearthed by Angeline Boulley.