One windy April afternoon, a young woman bicycles alone along a stretch of Iowa highway. She's pedaling hard, hurrying to get home in time for dinner . . . Alex Voormann is a cerebral thirty-year-old archaeologist married to the woman of his dreamsâ??a beautiful, ambitious botanist named Isabel. When Isabel, an organ donor, is killed by a reckless driver, Alex reluctantly consents to donate her heart. Janet Corcoran is a young, headstrong mother of two, an art teacher at an inner-city school in Chicago. Sick with heart disease, she is on the waiting list for a transplant, but her chances are slim. She watches the Weather Channel, secretly praying for foul weather and car accidents, a miracle. The day Isabel dies, she gets her wish. Flash forward a year. Janet sends Alex a long letter. She'd like to learn something about the woman who saved her life. Alex isn't interested in talking to the recipient of his dead wife's heart. Since Isabel's accident, he's become grief-stricken and bewildered. His closest companion is his mother-in-law, Bernice. They spend their nights reminiscing about Isabel and hiding out from the world. Meanwhile, a local blues musician named Jasper, the man responsible for Isabel's death, attempts to atone for his misdeed. Jasper is devastated by the knowledge that he destroyed a life but attracted to the idea that he was partially responsible for saving another lifeâ??Janet's. He sees her as his ultimate salvation. Irreplaceable is the story of what happens after the transplantâ??not only to Alex but within the concentric circles of family that spiral outward from him and from Janet. Stephen Lovely takes us vividly inside the lives of these characters to reveal their true intentionsâ??however misguidedâ??and gives us a stunning debut novel of loss… (más)
You might ask, why did this book take you so long to read, and yet you gave it 5 stars? The phrase "heavy boots" could be inserted here. I found the book real and intensely sad even though it is a life process. I just couldn't read much of it at a time or my personal boots got too heavy. ( )
Isabel was an organ donor, and her death sets in motion events in two families, in two states: for her mother Bernice and husband Alex, the pain of losing her; for Janet Corcoran and family, a brand new lease on life with a new heart.
I had a really tough time with this book, not least because I had to finish it for book discussion and was feeling ornery as a result. I didn't particularly like anyone, though I sympathized most with Alex, and I was extremely frustrated with everyone sort of putting pressure on him to meet Janet. Leaving aside the fact that organ donors and recipients' families are anonymous... well, no I can't really leave that aside, because without them intersecting there's basically no point to this book. Alex has his moments of being obnoxious, too, and I was a little disconcerted by the weird relationship he has with his mother-in-law. And Jasper - the man who was driving the car that hit Isabel - was just awful. I hated him. I'm not a huge fan of stories told in present tense, and never got into the story enough to forget that this one was. Finally, the way the narration would just suddenly tell me what a character was thinking or feeling was very jarring. The medical descriptions were really where the writing was at its best; everything else felt like window dressing for the Great Point the author was trying to make. ( )
Na een ernstig ongeluk overlijdt de jonge Isabel. Zij had aangegeven donor te willen zijn na haar overlijden. Haar hart wordt getransplanteerd bij Janet. De weduwnaar van Isabel, Alex en haar moeder, Bernice, maken emotionele tijden door. De transplantatie zelf wordt vrij gedetailleerd beschreven. Ook de dader van het ongeluk, Jasper, komt in het boek voor. Al met al niet heel erg herkenbaar, hoewel wel voorstelbaar. Een boek dat wel tot nadenken stemt. Geen makkelijke mening hierover. Ook een patiënt die een orgaan krijgt via donatie, blijft zijn hele leven patiënt en krijgt het niet echt makkelijker erdoor, maar het beter dan te moeten overlijden. ( )
Good book but on many levels so wrong. Transplant is such a huge issue and the 2 families should not have met. The interesting twist with the person responsible for the accident as well. I am not sure this book will encourage people to be donors. The medical stuff was spot on.
This book presented an enormous number of different opinions about organ transplants. Seen through the eyes and emotions of those left behind and of the recipient and her family, of one organ in particular, the heart, it's really an eye-opening view of perhaps many things that you either didn't know or never really thought about before. Add to that a couple of extraneous beings in the story, one of which is a dog, and you have an interwoven and complicated event that has a beginning and a potential ending sometime in the future. ( )
One windy April afternoon, a young woman bicycles alone along a stretch of Iowa highway. She's pedaling hard, hurrying to get home in time for dinner . . . Alex Voormann is a cerebral thirty-year-old archaeologist married to the woman of his dreamsâ??a beautiful, ambitious botanist named Isabel. When Isabel, an organ donor, is killed by a reckless driver, Alex reluctantly consents to donate her heart. Janet Corcoran is a young, headstrong mother of two, an art teacher at an inner-city school in Chicago. Sick with heart disease, she is on the waiting list for a transplant, but her chances are slim. She watches the Weather Channel, secretly praying for foul weather and car accidents, a miracle. The day Isabel dies, she gets her wish. Flash forward a year. Janet sends Alex a long letter. She'd like to learn something about the woman who saved her life. Alex isn't interested in talking to the recipient of his dead wife's heart. Since Isabel's accident, he's become grief-stricken and bewildered. His closest companion is his mother-in-law, Bernice. They spend their nights reminiscing about Isabel and hiding out from the world. Meanwhile, a local blues musician named Jasper, the man responsible for Isabel's death, attempts to atone for his misdeed. Jasper is devastated by the knowledge that he destroyed a life but attracted to the idea that he was partially responsible for saving another lifeâ??Janet's. He sees her as his ultimate salvation. Irreplaceable is the story of what happens after the transplantâ??not only to Alex but within the concentric circles of family that spiral outward from him and from Janet. Stephen Lovely takes us vividly inside the lives of these characters to reveal their true intentionsâ??however misguidedâ??and gives us a stunning debut novel of loss
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