Some people go to extraordinary lengths to acquire/sustain the “body beautiful.” Botox injections, dermal fillers, buttock lifts are de rigeur among influencers, celebs and wannabes.
Even they would likely baulk at the procedure undertaken (willingly) by the protagonist of Hanif Kreishi’s The Body.
The premise of the story is that medical science has discovered a way to transplant the human brain into younger, fitter, disease-free bodies. It’s a tantalising prospect for those people increasingly aware of their body’s ageing, creaking infrastructure.
Adam, the narrator of The Body, is all too aware that his best days are behind him. Then one night, at a party, a stranger tells him that he doesn’t need to go gentle into that good night — he can choose an entirely different life by having his brain surgically placed into the body of a younger man . It’s a dazzling prospect.
In his new incarnation as “Leo”, Adam sets off on a trip around Europe, indulging in as much culture, good food, sex, drugs and adventure as humanly possible. His adopted body attracts admiration wherever he goes.
Adam initially planned to inhabit his new body for just six months but well before the time is up, his thoughts turn to home and the wife he left behind.
Incarnation in a new body turns out to be problematic, and dangerous. It’s not just all the lustful attention that proves troublesome. Adam can handle that. What he can’t escape is the discovery that his new body is a valuable commodity; one that someone else desperately wants and will go to any lengths to get.
I rarely read science fiction because my brain struggles to accept/believe the premise of those kinds of novels. So I don’t even know how I came to have a copy of The Body on my shelves.
Just like the last science fiction novel I read, Hail Mary, The Body has a frankly preposterous set up. I know medical science has made huge advances but even so, the idea that a brain can be transplanted and then re-transplanted was a stretch too far.
Equally hard to swallow was that Adam recovers rapidly from what would have been a major surgical procedure. Within a couple of hours he’s wolfing down a big meal, leaping up from his hospital bed and raring to walk miles. There’s also next to no sign he’s had anything done – just a minute scar buried under his hairline.
Reservations remained but I pressed on with the book anyway because The Body seemed to offer an interesting commentary on our attiudes towards the aging process and the desire for eternal youth.
And it did but not to any great extent. What a missed opportunity. Instead of reflecting on the desirability or otherwise of trying to turn back the clock. Kureishi ends up in thriller land with shadowy figures and threatened violence.