The French Novel THE HEART by Maylis de Kerangal - A Lyrical Contemplation of Human Connections

French novelist Maylis de Kerangal (b 1967) received the Grand Prix Lire & Student Choice for Best Novel (2014) for THE HEART.  The nucleus of this exquisite elegy to life and the fibrous interconnections we create circulate around a heart transplant.  Simon is a virile 20 year drawn by the pulse of the tides.  He surfs & revels in the thrill of becoming one with the ocean.  The energy he draws from his passion cresting the waves is boundless.  However, our ties to life are tenuous.  Simon is returning home from an early exhilarating morning of surfing with his friends when the car crashes sending Simon head first through the windshield.  The force of the impact causes a complete loss of brain function.  Simon's heart continues its function of pumping blood throughout the body.  Simon's traumatic head injury proves fatal.  His mother is notified of her son's accident and fears for the worst.  Hastily, she leaves Simon's young sister with a neighbor & phones her ex, Simon's father.  After seeing their son who appears to be in a deep sleep, they're ushered into a private room where a surgeon informs them Simon is in an irreversible coma; mort.  The anguish of his parents is unbearable, emotions raw.  His parents are then pressed (as there is limited time line) if their son would have wanted to donate his heart & organs to enable others to go on living.  Maylis' lyrical writing intwines Simon's life with those lives he impacts going forward: medical staff involved in removing & transplanting his organs and the woman who will be the recipient of the life saving gift of his heart.   The constraints of the novel are driven by the pressure of time that is limited in order to carry out successful transplants.  The reader is rushed along the hospital procedures & guidelines with trajectories flowing into a vast divergence of lives that become joined.  This isn't a technical examination of scientific & medical technologies.  It's a profound understanding of the ephemeral ties we make in life, the constant flux of emotions and our unattainable mortality.  Maylis writing is mournful and poetic.  "What will become of everything that filled that heart, its emotions slowly deposited in stages since the first day, inoculated here & there in a rush of enthusiasm or a fit of rage, its friendships & enmities, its grudges, its vehemence its serious and tender inclinations?"  People's lives are splayed in infinite possibilities but our human essence bonds us all.  THE HEART is a life affirming novel and stirring homage to the adage, wake up & smell the coffee.