The Body Factory: from the first prosthetics to the augmented human
by Héloïse Chochois
translated by Kendra Boileau
2021

This is another book I bought from Graphic Mundi at the Small Press Expo and it feels a bit like a Mary Roach book, in that it looks at the history and development of a fascinating but somewhat disturbing topic, in this case amputation and prosthetics. This being a graphic novel* came with some pros and cons in that the illustrations were extremely helpful in following the topic, but also kind of disturbing as the topic started with dismemberment. But it covers a lot of ground very quickly, using a framing story of a young man who loses his arm in a motorcycle accident and is getting through the recovery process.

The book is divided into four main chapters:

1. Amputation
2. Phantom Limb
3. Prostheses
4. Transhumanism

This book is very much a basic introduction to the topic and concepts that can give you a foundation from which to look into more details, and I found this fascinating and sufficient for the first three chapters discussing history and anatomy but less so for the final chapter which seems a more niche philosophical perspective than a mainstream overview. The mention of how “Eugenics is a matter of great debate among transhumanists who recognize that there are negatives but also positive aspects to eugenics” was a major red flag for me.

So this book is fiction (framing story), nonfiction (first three chapters), and philosophy (fourth chapter.) In some ways this reminds me of Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder (a book I only read once, decades ago, so take with a grain of salt) in the way it’s framed, but I didn’t care for that book and I did enjoy this one. Although upon reflection, Sophie’s World was all about philosophy and the one section I didn’t care for in this book was the philosophy chapter.

I did enjoy this book, and I do recommend it, but with some caveats: be prepared for some casual medical gore and expect the fourth chapter to be the author’s take on philosophy rather than the nonfiction of the previous chapters.

_{* I’ll reiterate a pet peeve of mine that this type of book gets called either a “graphic novel” or a “comic book” and both of those are misleading terms when it comes to books like this one. But I don’t have a better term for it. Sigh.}