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"Resurrectionist" is such a poetic, evocative word for something so gruesome. I've been reading Bone Garden. It does a lovely job of capturing the ambiguity of the practice: the real need to properly train doctors and advance medical science as well as the real human cost. I am not sentimental about the bodies of the dead. I don't mind the thought that my body might be used for transplantation or scientific research. It doesn't bother me that if I die at home, the cats will likely have a little nosh. All the same, to steal and desecrate in the various ways that happen in the book, and that did happen in the real world in the past... it just doesn't sit right. I am thinking about Stiff, the non-fiction book I read not long ago about things like the research uses to which corpses are put. The corpse farm, the surgical practice, and all of those things don't bother me. There is a usefullness there and the bodies are handled with a certain amount of respect for the sacrifice. I was good at dissection of animals in my day. I'm not squeamish. Still, there was a difference between Dara and I opening dead animals to see how the bodies really worked, and the boys who had the eyeball fight in another part of the lab. There's a line there, somewhere. I like how well Bone Garden explores that line.