Sawbones

Catherine Johnson

Walker Books

9781406340570

October 2013

paperback

Finished

I reviewed (positively I seem to remember) a number of this author’s early young adult books when I was writing Teen/YA book reviews for The Scotsman. It had been a while since I had read something by her. I remembered those earlier books as being very contemporary, but Sawbones is a firmly historical novel set in the age of pioneering anatomy and surgery.

Johnson (who writes scripts for Holby City amongst other things) writes no less well about historical subject-matter than she does about contemporary issues. If I have two reservations about this novel they would be i) the narrative curve is a little too shallow in the early part of the book (I would have liked the shooting episode which energises the plot momentum to have happened twenty pages sooner) and ii) I didn’t quite see the dramatic point of Anna’s departure for Holland near the start of the novel unless it is to become a factor in a sequel, and even then I think it should have received some kind of return mention at the end of this novel.

Those two caveats aside, Sawbones can be enthusiastically recommended as a stirring yarn with vivid characters and equally vivid action. If only the BBC still produced a sequence of Sunday afternoon serials, this book would have been a perfect candidate for dramatisation.

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