The latest addition to my website is Maylis de Kerangal‘s Réparer les vivants (UK: Mend the Living; US: The Heart). Three teenage boys go surfing early one Sunday morning. On the way back the car smashes into a telegraph pole at speed. Two of the boys are badly injured, the third to all intents and purposes dead, kept artificially alive by machines. The rest of the novel follows the storiy in some detail of how his heart (and other organs) are transplanted to a recipient at the other side of the country. We get considerable detail about the whole procedure as well as the stories of the parents but also the many people involved in the transplant which makes for fascinating reading, The book had considerable success in France when published.