García's Heart.

Beryl Hamilton is a freelance writer in Thunder Bay who specializes in
home gardening.

The novel follows Patrick Lazerenko, a disenchanted neurologist, who leaves his university career to enter a risky business venture, then travels to the Hague to attend the war crimes trial of his former mentor, Hernan García, formerly a Honduran doctor. Lazerenko’s relationship with García when he was a teenager and young man is the centre of the book’s interest. He becomes embroiled in the emotions and politics of the trial and meets once again García’s daughter, with whom he had once had a love affair. She wants nothing to do with him and is embroiled in her own political leanings, which Patrick worries about. Subplots emerge with García’s defence demanding that Lazerenko reveal specific details about his neuroscience research, which could perhaps vindicate García. Enigmatically, García refuses to speak and will not make eye contact with anyone in the courtroom. Lazerenko is deeply conflicted, trying to reconcile his memory of García and the people he helped medically with the alleged war crimes of which he is accused.

Liam Durcan is himself a neurologist at the Montreal Neurological Hospital and has been awarded a number of prizes for his writing. Surprisingly, this novel, which has a neuroscientist as the protagonist, offers little in the way of in-depth information about this complex and intriguing field. We do not learn much about García’s work and mental state or Lazerenko’s cutting-edge research. Lazerenko emerges as a wishy-washy and at times unbelievable character, with little of the depth or complexity necessary to gain a reader’s interest. He is generally an unlikeable fellow but, unlike Dostoevsky’s murderer in Crime & Punishment, who has the power to interest one in exploring his twisted mind, Lazerenko offers nothing much but his own weak-mindedness. His efforts to understand García and the relationship he had with him generate little suspense or psychological insight. The plot of this novel has great potential, but tends to drag for long stretches; the book is, for the most part, not a page-turner.