 |
|
| ||||||||||||||||
| THE COMMODITY OF LOVE is about a poet turned heart surgeon who convinces himself that he's given all his love away, a notion so terrifying he makes one desperate, extreme attempt to get it all back. One premise underlying the story is that love can often be like money, a commodity exchanged back and forth, possessed in varying amounts from one individual to the next. By age eighteen, when he leaves home to be a wandering poet, Markus Greene's internal bank account of love is overflowing thanks to the intense focus of his mother's loving care. Burdened by this emotional wealth, Markus finds purpose in giving it away, first to his high school girlfriends, then to the hundreds of strangers who buy his handwritten poetry. Years later, after being given honorary admission to Med School by Dartmouth's poetry-loving president, Markus has become a heart transplant surgeon with no love left to give. He constructs a clandestine operating room in his Vermont farmhouse. When a baby girl's heart doesn't take during a transplant procedure, Markus steals the pure heart and brings it home. There he feeds it hydroponically over a period of months. He reads his favorite children's books out loud to his future heart. Once it reaches full-size he convinces his mentor and best friend Dr. Kathryn Stone to transplant it inside him, replacing his own diseased heart, and giving him a fresh start on love. Markus is then ready for years of loving only one woman. The problem is that Kathryn, during the transplant, decides it won't be Markus' love she will be the recipient of, but that of the little girl whose heart now beats inside him. |