A review by scijessreads
Anatomy: A Love Story by Dana Schwartz

4.0

What starts as a story about a young woman trying to defy class and society expectations to be a surgeon in the 1800’s in Scotland becomes a bit more of a morality tale and a story of young love. Honestly, the love story here was tangential to the rest. Hazel is a powerhouse, learning how to just say f*@k it and go after what she truly wants. Jack is a good counterpoint, young and brash and an easy companion for Hazel as she works in the trenches to learn her craft. The depiction of early medicine is both fascinating and cringeworthy, as any depiction of the early days of medicine is. But in this story the pursuit of medical knowledge is tinged with a bit of the fantastical in the concept of immortality (tied to classism and the idea of who should get this sort of “honor”) developed by Dr. Beecham.

The ending was both bittersweet and a bit ambiguous, which I normally don’t love, but here works very much for the darker, gothic aspects of the story.