“… he was my North Star whenever the darkness of doubt threatened to envelop me. When I could not tell my dreams from wakefulness, he remained my touchstone and my Truth; a glimmer in his eye and a quirk of his lips were are that it took to make me feel manifest, whole, and worthy.”
Aardvark rang out 2024 with a bang – including an early release in their December selections that is dark academia meets historical fiction meets true crime meets the gothic and grotesque. Oh, and it’s also a love story. A. Rae Dunlap’s The Resurrectionist (Kensington Books) was an unexpected thrill of a ride. And that cover. Isn’t she just lovely?
Set in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1828, The Resurrectionist is the story of James Willoughby, a son of high society who has left his studies at Oxford to pursue his dream of studying surgery in Edinburgh. Scotland is a bit removed from life in England, and he has some initial difficulties adjusting. But James is smart, driven, and excited. He finds like-minded friends and excels in his studies. But the real studies aren’t at the University – but rather at the “private” schools, where James will have his own cadaver.
Here is where fact and fiction dance in a delicious way. These “private” schools would “steal” recently buried bodies – or rather, they would pay for the bodies. When James’s family writes him to advise that the financial situation is a bit dire and they can no longer pay for his studies, James is forced to take things into his own hands; he joins a crew as a digger. It’s dirty, dangerous, and exciting – and James thrives in it, partly because he’s with Nye, the gorgeous dissectionist that stirs many emotions. Things become even more dangerous when Burke and Hare enter the scene.
This is a phenomenal debut. The ending is such that a second novel of Nye and James continuing their romance and their studies in London despite the risk of being revealed is set up quite nicely, though I’m not sure there will be a backdrop as thrilling as the snatchers and Burke and Hare.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 