Longlisted for the 2009 Giller Prize, the Heart Specialist by Claire Holden Rothman, her first, and only novel so far, opens in 1882 with a girl’s dreamlike memory of her father leaning over her in her bed, saying goodbye. As it turns out, that goodbye is forever as Dr. Honoré Bourret flees Montreal under a cloud of suspicion of having murdered his crippled sister, despite being acquitted at trial. He leaves behind his pregnant wife, and daughter Agnès. The wife dies giving birth to Agnès’ sister Laure, leaving the girls to be raised by their maternal Grandmother White. So Agnès and Laure Bourret became Agnes and Laure White.
Dr. Bourret was a pathologist and so had many medical specimens in his personal collection. Agnes is curious and fascinated with these specimens and with her father’s medical specialty. Her grandmother at first attempts to squelch that curiosity but relents under the persuasion of the girls’ new governess, Miss Skerry. The highly gifted Agnes blossoms under Miss Skerry, and she soon finds herself top of her class in an elite Montreal prep school. Luck and a little gentle arm-twisting persuades her grandmother to allow her to continue to McGill University, where she hopes to persuade the authorities there to allow her into the prestigious medical school. Agnes is thwarted in her attempt to enter and to establish a parallel medical faculty for women. (McGill did not graduate any women from their medical school until 1922, to their great shame).
Agnes sidestepped them and obtained her degree from Bishop’s College, who admitted her in an attempt to one-up McGill. Despite this success, she was unable to establish herself until she was offered the job of curator of the medical museum at the McGill Medical School. It being in total disarray, she sets out to organize it and discovers that many of the specimens had been harvested by her father and his protégé William Howlett, including a heart with a seemingly unique anomaly, dubbed “The Howlett Heart”. During Agnes’ struggle to become a physician, Howlett had established himself as one of the pre-eminent physicians in North America. Agnes brings the heart to him at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to consult on it and finds herself falling under his thrall. Howlett is impressed with her and becomes a benefactor for the museum.
Throughout all this the shadow of Honoré Bourret looms over Agnes, as she seeks to honor her father with her work. Yet, the records surrounding the harvesting of the Howlett Heart are curiously inconsistent. This inconsistency drives forward Agnes’ quest to find her father. In fact, the arc of this entire story points to the moment when father and daughter meet again. It is here that the story falls apart for me.
Some might criticize the author for glossing over large parts of Agnes’ life, particularly her time as an undergraduate at McGill and at med school at Bishop’s. However, to go into great detail about that time would have perhaps made the book ponderous and caused undue delay in getting to the point the author was taking us. Still, it made it appear as if Agnes’ struggle was not much of a struggle at all. My real disappointment is with the meeting.
In good literature, one can hardly expect that the meeting would be a happy one, with all things forgiven, and everyone reconciled. It was anything but. After a long journey to find him, the meeting with her father was short and disappointing for Agnes, but most especially for the reader. This was supposed to be the climax of the story, where the two either reconcile or have it out. Neither happens. Nothing happens. The whole thing falls flat. Instead of ending it here, where it should end, where everyone expects it to end, the author opts for cheap, sappy romance. A truly disappointing ending to a well-written book.