The Resurrectionist by A Rae Dunlap

The Resurrectionist, A Rae Dunlap’s historical fiction debut opens with such verve that it is likely to draw readers in immediately. A lively narrative that more than hints at the mayhem to follow as it opens with narrator James Willoughby carting a corpse through the streets of Edinburgh in a wheelbarrow. The Resurrectionist is set in the early 19th century as medical study was booming in the Scottish city. The need for bodies led to a trade in fresh corpses and rise of the body snatchers, or ‘resurrectionists’ as they liked to style themselves.

When The Resurrectionist returns to the beginning of its story, third son of a wealthy family James Willoughby, gives up his Oxford studies to move to Edinburgh and study medicine. There he finds the best way to study anatomy is not through the university but in one of the many private medical schools that has sprung up in the city. Only straightened financial circumstances require James to find money and that draws him into the world of the body snatchers, and particularly a man called Aneurin and his gang. It is Aneurin who brings James into the trade but also provides him with a philosophical justification for the dark work that they do.

The Resurrectionist is a fascinating period of medical history and Dunlap fills the narrative with period detail and actual characters from the time (the Afterword helps disentangle the fictional from the non-fictional). This includes the infamous pair of Burke and Hare, who are remembered as body snatchers but actually found more direct ways of sourcing their wares than digging them up from graveyards. Dunlap manages to work their true story into that of James and Aneurin to build to a page-turning second half.
Central to this book working so well is the character of James. Because on top of everything, The Resurrectionist is also a coming-of-age story. James gets deep into a dark world but in doing so learns about himself, finds a purpose, finds love and manages to pull himself out from under the shadow of his family. There are elements of his life that feel a little like wish fulfillment, but Dunlap earns enough good will to make it all work.

Overall, The Resurrectionist is a great piece of gothic-styled historical fiction. Dunlap explores a fascinating, if a little macabre, time and place and in doing so exposes some of the very real characters who peopled it. And she does this through an engagingly flawed main character who provides readers with a justifiable entrée in this world and a reason to stay and see how it all works out.

The Resurrectionist by A Rae Dunlap

8.5

8.5/10