Endless putrescence

24. Anatomy: A Love Story – Dana Schwartz

Hazel Sinnett is a lady who wants to be a doctor and she’s trying in 1817 Edinburgh, so of course she gets kicked out of Dr. Beecham’s lecture. When she gets kicked out, she runs into someone useful if you want to learn on the sly about anatomy, Jack, a resurrectionist.

After Hazel makes a deal to learn from Dr. Beecham if she can pass the medical examination without attending any of his lectures, she and Jack start working together and Hazel gets a taste of the Frankenstein life with the same goal of life, but not from death, or is it? That sentence didn’t really make sense and I’m not rewriting it, but there is some searching for immortality in this story and some serious need for bodies so Hazel can keep studying that gets her a bit obsessive. She needs to see all the anomalies for science!

Jack, on the procuring bodies side, notices more things going on around the city than Hazel, like his friends disappearing. Skulky characters on the fringes. And the Roman Fever is back with a vengeance in the lower classes first, but it will spread like they do. Jack helps Hazel get bodies that she can help who are already living too. Lots of lessons learned and classes transcended and who could help but fall in love amidst the stench of sickness and death and learning?

 

Peregrine and Ozymandias didn’t learn anything, but still had a sweet relationship anyway. Sometimes you meet in the street after getting kicked out of med school, sometimes you meet on a couch cushion, both are valid.

 

19. Immortality: A Love Story – Dana Schwartz

Hazel’s in jail! Not right away, but after she helps a woman who won’t say what her name is with the bloody results of trying to get rid of her own pregnancy, she’s accused of being a doctor who got rid of a pregnancy in the wrong era, essentially. But she doesn’t know that until a hearing and then, all of a sudden, Hazel is whisked away to help Princess Charlotte down in London at the request of the Prince Regent who is ruling in the stead of his dad, King George III, who we all know in the USA particularly and who was at the point the story takes place pretty darn raving.

Hazel also runs into a secret society once she’s in London, the very one who produced Dr. Beecham and his immortal weirdness. Dr. Beecham also is supposedly dead and left Hazel an inheritance, which is weird. The secret society wants Hazel to replace Dr. Beecham as their sewing bits and pieces back on doctor like Death Becomes Her with no mannequin paint, but all of the attitude.

Hazel is able to figure out the madness of King George, the unspecified ailment of Princess Charlotte, runs into Jack at the most unexpected place ever, and also has her family accusing her of ruining her reputation.  And Jack tries to put her off, but, that doesn’t work and he knew it wasn’t going to. Those two can’t stop making out in open graves. They’re going to have to become cemetery caretakers in the US once they get there.

 

Pere and Ozy looking into their own future not taking care of anything like a doctor or a cemetery caretaker would. Bliss.