Mountains Made Low

Book #2 (2009)

For some reason, I had gotten the impression, as when I started reading Stephen King’s Duma Key about this time last year, that Dean Koontz’s Your Heart Belongs to Me was not a supernatural thriller. Perhaps this is related to having read Koontz’s The Good Guy, which—while a thriller—is not in the least supernatural. I guess I sort of expected more of the same here.

I was wrong.

This novel tells the story of Ryan Perry, a mid-30s dotcom millionaire. He is young, wealthy, and basically retired. He is also in great physical shape: daily workouts, sessions with his personal trainer three times a week, and an incredibly active life that includes surfing (and, on at least one occasion, accidentally riding a shark) on the Pacific coast near his Los Angeles home.

So he’s shocked when a genetic defect causes cardiomyopathy, and he is given an estimated one year to live.

His internist and cardiologist do everything they can for him; his girlfriend, Samantha Reach, is loving and kind and supportive; but Ryan cannot sit back and let his treatment, ultimately leading to the hope of a heart transplant, take its course. He has been aggressive in his business dealings and feels he must do something about his illness, as well.

Of course, doing something is where the problems start for Ryan, and he finds himself caught up in a world of intrigue, otherworldly apparitions, and murderous foreign agents for his trouble—after he gets his heart transplant. He loses Sam, loses his friendship with his primary care physician, even loses his mind for a while, and is very nearly killed, almost costing his somewhat estranged father’s life in the process.

Your Heart Belongs to Me is, in some ways, a reader’s novel, or at least a literature major’s novel. Long before the reasons for it made any sense (and I’ll note that there is a reason for it woven into the story), the poems of Edgar Allen Poe form a thread in narrative of the novel that’s interesting to watch, particularly some of Poe’s famous but less-so works (“The Lake,” and “The Bells” jumped off the page at me). And I found this quite interesting and quite serendipitous in that I was reading Koontz’s novel on the weekend leading up to the bicentennial of Poe’s birth (this Monday, 19 January 2009, will be Poe’s 200th birthday). So, yes, I enjoyed the Poe references.

I’m less sure, though, that I enjoyed the overall message of the novel. It is not Ryan’s heart or his transplant, or even his wealth (at least not directly) that leads to his troubles; it is his inability to leave well enough alone. It is his need to do something more than trusting his doctors, taking his meds, and waiting for a donor heart. When he feels the need to take the bull by the horns, his troubles start.

But the thing of it is, Ryan’s “action” on his own behalf amounts only to doing research and transferring his care to the best physician he can find. The second cardiologist he sees, Dr. Dougal Hobb, who performs Ryan’s transplant, has a stellar international reputation, a spotless history, and flawless credentials. And Ryan is wealthy enough to afford him. But in the final analysis, all Ryan does to land himself in all this trouble is attempt to ensure that his care is in the hands of the very best. When it turns out that the word “best” has multiple definitions, and it becomes clear that there are ways in which Dr. Hobb is far from the best, other characters, Ryan himself, and the narrative itself seem to hold Ryan accountable for that, for things he did not know, could not have known. And the denouement of the novel really bothers me.

While I won’t spoil what happens or how the novel ends, the last chapters attempt to show that after this experience, Ryan has “become a better man.” My problem with this is that there wasn’t much wrong with Ryan to begin with. Nothing actually. In fact, Ryan’s only character flaw throughout the novel is that he is successful and wealthy. But in that, he is also ethical, honest, generous, kind, loving, and understanding—shame on him for having the drive to succeed, the vision to feed that drive, and the material advantages that success can bring.

In my final analysis, Your Heart Belongs to Me is a good story with a dubious message. It is a reader’s novel, with the references to Poe, and a writer’s novel with the discussion of text and subtext in writing. It is not a long or challenging read, and since it will be difficult, at this point, for anyone else to enjoy the timing I did in relation to Poe, I’ll point out, as I did with Koontz’s earlier novel The Good Guy, that the paperback may well be available for your 2009 summer beach reading pleasure.