Pig Heart Boy by Malorie Blackman
Jul. 4th, 2007 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
I am drowning in this roaring silence.
I am drowning. I'm going to die ...
Cameron is thirteen and desperately in need of a heart transplant when a pioneering doctor approaches his family with a startling proposal. He can give Cameron a new heart - but not one from a human, one from a pig.
It's never been done before. It's experimental, risky and very controversial. But Cameron is fed up with just sitting on the side of life, always watching and never doing. He has to try - to become the world's first pig-heart boy.
Having really not enjoyed Noughts & Crosses, I was a little worried about reading this book, but it's actually a very clever, very moving way of looking at a serious problem.
We meet Cameron in a swimming pool watching his friends play Daredevil Dive, where they race to be the first to touch the bottom of the deepest part of the pool and return to the surface. He's unable to join in because of a virus he suffered a couple of years earlier, which is slowly but surely destroying his heart. Blackman does very well in immediately giving Cameron a credible voice, helped by the use of the first person and she perfectly captures the envy he feels for his friends. Cameron knows that there's little chance of a donor becoming available to replace his heart (in fact, there's a painful moment where he recounts how he was on the donor list and summoned into the hospital for a transplant, only to be told when he got there that the heart had gone to an emergency case that was more important than his). So when his father tells him that he's contacted Dr Bryce, a former heart surgeon who's currently working on engineering pigs for organ donation, you understand why Cameron wants to go for it. At the same time, Blackman uses Cameron's parents to voice the pros and cons of going for such an experimental operation but she's also not afraid to show how Cameron's condition has taken a toll on the parents' marriage, such that each keeps secrets from the other.
I was particularly impressed with the way Blackman gets across the science of using animal organs for human donation whilst also setting up the ethical issues. This can be seen particularly in Cameron's reaction to Trudy the pig whose heart he'll be taking. Neither does Blackman shy away from the actions of certain animal extremists (the language and actions are harsh and shocking) but she's clever enough to also put some of those attitudes into Cameron's friends and she uses the hyperbole of the media reaction to feed into those attitudes. I think my favourite scenes in the book are those between Cameron and Julie after the operation because Blackman uses them to highlight the changes in both characters as a result of the procedure and she really doesn't pull her punches as Cameron discovers how in gaining one thing he's always wanted, he's lost something else. I was less convinced by the relationship between Marlon and Cameron, mainly because I didn't quite buy into Cameron's willingness to forgive Marlon's actions (no matter how understandable those were) - but again, it's a good way of showing how the procedure changed things for Cameron, things that he wasn't really prepared for.
Blackman's decision not to sugar coat her book extends to the ending, which I'm not going to spoil. She leaves it pretty open and yet the reader is in no doubt as to what Cameron's fate will be.
If I'm going to criticise anything, it's the scenes with the grandmother, which didn't work for me and seemed far too artificial a device for what Blackman wanted to achieve. I also wasn't wild about the baby element to the story, but it did give Blackman the chance to have Cameron monologue his inner-feelings about events, which worked for me in terms of fleshing out his character.
The Verdict:
Moving and satisfying on an emotional and intellectual level. This deals with a complex subject in an interesting and thought-provoking way and never feels as though it's talking down to the reader.
I am drowning in this roaring silence.
I am drowning. I'm going to die ...
Cameron is thirteen and desperately in need of a heart transplant when a pioneering doctor approaches his family with a startling proposal. He can give Cameron a new heart - but not one from a human, one from a pig.
It's never been done before. It's experimental, risky and very controversial. But Cameron is fed up with just sitting on the side of life, always watching and never doing. He has to try - to become the world's first pig-heart boy.
Having really not enjoyed Noughts & Crosses, I was a little worried about reading this book, but it's actually a very clever, very moving way of looking at a serious problem.
We meet Cameron in a swimming pool watching his friends play Daredevil Dive, where they race to be the first to touch the bottom of the deepest part of the pool and return to the surface. He's unable to join in because of a virus he suffered a couple of years earlier, which is slowly but surely destroying his heart. Blackman does very well in immediately giving Cameron a credible voice, helped by the use of the first person and she perfectly captures the envy he feels for his friends. Cameron knows that there's little chance of a donor becoming available to replace his heart (in fact, there's a painful moment where he recounts how he was on the donor list and summoned into the hospital for a transplant, only to be told when he got there that the heart had gone to an emergency case that was more important than his). So when his father tells him that he's contacted Dr Bryce, a former heart surgeon who's currently working on engineering pigs for organ donation, you understand why Cameron wants to go for it. At the same time, Blackman uses Cameron's parents to voice the pros and cons of going for such an experimental operation but she's also not afraid to show how Cameron's condition has taken a toll on the parents' marriage, such that each keeps secrets from the other.
I was particularly impressed with the way Blackman gets across the science of using animal organs for human donation whilst also setting up the ethical issues. This can be seen particularly in Cameron's reaction to Trudy the pig whose heart he'll be taking. Neither does Blackman shy away from the actions of certain animal extremists (the language and actions are harsh and shocking) but she's clever enough to also put some of those attitudes into Cameron's friends and she uses the hyperbole of the media reaction to feed into those attitudes. I think my favourite scenes in the book are those between Cameron and Julie after the operation because Blackman uses them to highlight the changes in both characters as a result of the procedure and she really doesn't pull her punches as Cameron discovers how in gaining one thing he's always wanted, he's lost something else. I was less convinced by the relationship between Marlon and Cameron, mainly because I didn't quite buy into Cameron's willingness to forgive Marlon's actions (no matter how understandable those were) - but again, it's a good way of showing how the procedure changed things for Cameron, things that he wasn't really prepared for.
Blackman's decision not to sugar coat her book extends to the ending, which I'm not going to spoil. She leaves it pretty open and yet the reader is in no doubt as to what Cameron's fate will be.
If I'm going to criticise anything, it's the scenes with the grandmother, which didn't work for me and seemed far too artificial a device for what Blackman wanted to achieve. I also wasn't wild about the baby element to the story, but it did give Blackman the chance to have Cameron monologue his inner-feelings about events, which worked for me in terms of fleshing out his character.
The Verdict:
Moving and satisfying on an emotional and intellectual level. This deals with a complex subject in an interesting and thought-provoking way and never feels as though it's talking down to the reader.
