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A novel to laugh and cry with
Book Review
By Derryll White
Cornwell, Patricia (1994). The Body Farm.
For he maketh the storm to cease so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they are at rest and so he bringeth them unto their desired haven.
I always feel as if I am caught somewhere between a first date and a formal interview with Dr. Kay Scarpetta when I read one of Patricia Cornwell’s novels in the Scarpetta series. There is a removal of what is normal and an infusion of new excitement, something akin to the excitement of new love. I suppose that is why I come back to her.
Patricia Cornwell gives the reader insight into just why all the forensic science/CSI TV shows are so engaging. She reveals the morgue and the duties of the forensic pathologist as the stage and actor from which the victim speaks. We all want to believe that at least once in our lives someone will hear us clearly. Dr. Kay Scarpetta listens with every faculty she has.
Cornwell captures a sadness in this novel that is not unknown. For many love finds it hard to speak, to make feelings manifest in words and action. Dr. Scarpetta is a driven woman, powerful, strong and fierce. Her fiery Italian heritage is always present. With frustrated motherly love for her niece Lucy and passionate feelings for the new man in her life, Scarpetta tries to balance cold scientific rationalism and hot personal biology. Patricia Cornwell makes it all so human. Like the song says – “Love hurts!”
Patricia Cornwell is incredibly adept at weaving human emotion into words, and then somehow transferring that viscerally to the reader. This is a novel to laugh and cry with.
****
Excerpts from the novel:
FORECAST – The Buncombe County Courthouse was an old dark brick building that I suspected had been the tallest edifice downtown until not too many years before. Its thirteen stories were topped by the jail, and as I looked up at barred windows against a bright blue sky, I thought of Richmond’s overcrowded jail, spreading out over acres, with coils of razor wire the only view. I believed it would not be long before cities like Ashville would need more cells as violence continued to become so alarmingly common.
THE REAL JOB – I had collected body parts of people blown up by bombs made with duct tape. I had removed it from the bound victims of sadistic killers and from bodies weighted with cinder blocks and dumped into rivers and lakes. I could not count the times I had peeled it from the mouths of people who were not allowed to scream until they were wheeled into my morgue. For it was only there the body could speak freely. It was only there someone cared about every awful thing that had been done.
SCARPETTA – I put on a pot of Zuppadi Aglo Fresco, a fresh garlic soup popular in the hills of Brisighella, where it has been fed to babies and the elderly for many years. That and ravioli, filled with sweet squash and chestnuts would do the trick, and it lifted my mood when a fire was blazing in the living room and wonderful aromas filled the air. It was true that when I went long periods without cooking, it felt as if no one lived in my lovely home or cared. It almost seemed my house got sad.
THE BODY FARM – The purpose is to help the living.
That was the point when The Body Farm came into being more than twenty years before, when scientists got determined to learn more about time of death. On any given day its several wooded acres held dozens of bodies in varying stages of decomposition. Research projects had brought me here periodically over the years, and though I would never be perfect in determining time of death, I had gotten better.
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org
