October 26, 2024

I have recently finished reading what may be my book of the year — The Story of A Heart by Rachel Clarke.

The book tells the story of how nine-year old Keira’s heart became Max’s heart. Keira suffered from a massive brain injury in a car crash in Devon while Max was perilously ill with an enlarged heart, kept alive by an implanted pump that meant he no longer had a pulse. 1

As a parent, this was a very tough read, reaching into our deepest fears of how wrong it is for our children to die before us. There were times in the book where I could feel emotion welling-up and just had to stop for a while. Often these were triggered by moments of humanity where the NHS staff or family members did more than was necessary to sustain these children.

The book also takes interesting diversions into the history of the science that underpins organ transplants, the consequences of such surgery, and the ethics of transplants. These were not a distraction as they helped the reader build-up an understanding of what would take place at the conclusion of the book and why.

‘Science’ books work best when they also tell a story — an excellent example being Rebecca Skloot’s book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. This book tells a powerful story of two families linked by tragedy and how their cases affected those around them and changed the practice of organ transplants across the UK.

  1. I found these little snippets of information fascinating. Max’s pump rotated, so blood was continuously pushed around his body.↩︎

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