I finished Garcia's Heart yesterday. It's a novel by Liam Durcan, an acquinatance of mine from undergrad. We had a good friend in common, Darren, who neither of us has talked to in awhile. I came across the book by reading a bit in the paper how this guy name Liam was going to have a reading at McNally-Robinson.
I thought "hey, I know I guy named Liam. He was in med school and had moved to Montreal." I didn't know his last name, but the paper indicated that this Liam was the same guy: a doctor from Winnipeg, now living in Montreal. So, I went to the reading, and it was him.
So, I bought Liam's novel, which signed for me. It's good. The story is of a doctor who travels to The Hague to attend the war crimes trial of the man who inspired him to go into medical school. The narrator chose to go into brain research rather than medical practice, but then left his university research job to start up a company that uses his research techniques to analyze how people make decisions by means of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI in the research lingo).
The book raises a number of interesting issues, including: how can a seemingly good man have done bad things? can fMRI determine how people make bad decisions, that is decisions that have bad consequences for others? and how can things known now effect how we feel about what's happened in the past?
And this is the second book that mentions Moby Dick as a significant feature in the text. The Bone series did also. So, I'm wondering: should I read Moby Dick next?
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