Dear Liza

Hole in the Middle

By Kendra Fortmeyer

10 Oct, 2023

**Special Requests**

8 comments

Support me with a Patreon monthly subscription! — 10 Oct, 2023

**Special Requests**

8 comments

Kendra Fortmeyer’s 2019 Hole in the Middle is a coming-of-age magical realist novel.

Seventeen-year-old Morgan Stone always wears bulky, concealing clothes and avoids social interactions that could require showing skin. This isn’t because Morgan is a modern-day puritan. It is because Morgan was born with a hole through her lower torso and she does not care to find out how others will react to this oddity.

Adding to Morgan’s anxiety: years of failed medical treatments have surely sent the message that Morgan is imperfect and needs correction. In addition, Morgan’s mother’s career centers on assuring other women that physical perfection is attainable; Morgan, having failed to be physically or socially perfect, is clearly not trying hard enough. Finally, there is the matter of a father who abandoned Morgan and her mother when Morgan was an infant.

Tiring of isolation, Morgan decides to throw caution to the wind. She heads out for an evening of dancing, wearing a revealing top. The consequence? No angry mobs bearing torches and pitchforks. Instead, Morgan has an enjoyable night.

2019 being an era of social media, photos of Morgan dancing almost immediately hit the interwebs. The Hole Girl is an online sensation. Reactions do include hostile and perverse comments but also supportive ones. A charming young man begins courting Morgan. Being Hole Girl does not seem to be such a terrible thing.

Morgan needs this brief moment of success, because her life soon goes in an unexpected, unrequested direction. Doctor Parker Morse contacts Morgan and her doctor with unexpected news: Morse’s patient Howie has a rare genetic condition that is the exact opposite of Morgan’s. Morse is convinced she can cure both Howie and Morgan … and if Morgan doesn’t see why she should cooperate, those around her will provide Morgan with the firm guidance she clearly needs.

~oOo~

In defense of her mother and doctor¹: the quest to find a cure for Hole isn’t driven entirely by a desire for relentless physical conformity and perfection. In Morgan’s case, the Hole traverses her without compromising any organs or skeletal structures on which her life depends. There’s a good chance that the reason Hole is so rare is because that is not true for most people with this particular condition. Also there is an tiny chance (unknowable because the condition is so rare) that Morgan’s condition will evolve in such a way as to become fatal.

On the other hand, Dr. Morse seems to be at least a little bonkers. It’s a pretty big jump from two patients having mirror-image conditions to believing that they can somehow cancel out each other’s genetic abnormality. Is there no laugh test in science? To compensate for her dubious thesis, Morse is also pretty pushy about drafting Morgan into her research project; unsurprisingly, consent gets examined from a number of angles in this novel. Medical consent is just one of those angles.

I am not really sure why this novel is being pitched as magical realism. The Hole is a bit unusual but not outside the range of possibility. I see it as a novel about issues people might plausibly encounter while growing up, like drifting apart from friends, the struggle to meet parental expectations², online fame, distinguishing between genuine attraction and guys with weird fetishes, and (to quote an old movie) all that jazz. It’s a nice example of a book that is skillfully executed while being for an audience that’s not me.

Hole in the Middle is available here (Amazon US), here (Amazon Canada), here (Amazon UK), here (Apple Books), here (Barnes & Noble), and here (Chapters-Indigo).

1: As for dad: he cannot be defended. He left because Morgan was imperfect. Remarried, he has the kids he wanted and feels no real desire to reconnect with Morgan.

2: Morgan’s mother may have good reason to think Morgan won’t actually get around to pursuing her academic and professional dreams without some nudging.

Comments

Jacob Haller

I appreciate you not spoiling how Dr. Morse's treatment went, and I guess I shouldn't either, but I will note that it didn't work out in a way that I expected.

James NicollJacob Haller

Having been the recipient of bold medical procedures, I thought it fell nicely within the realm of possible outcomes.

Andy Wheeler

So...there's a girl with a "hole" and a boy with "the exact opposite," and the societally-demanded result is for the two of them to "get together," in some way, hmmm?

Is this less of a gigantic honking sex metaphor than it seems to be, or is that the deal?

James NicollAndy Wheeler

There is definitely a sex parallel except that somehow making it a medical procedure subject to debate makes the whole affair even more stressful and awkward.

Laura Burchard

I briefly pictured "the exact opposite" as a isolated lump of flesh fitting the spot.

Robert Carnegie

I suppose it's "magical realism" because I feel it isn't a realistic medical condition any more than the time traveller in "The Time Traveller's Wife" has a realistic medical problem, time travel. I was trying to think of an actual situation that applies; there probably are startling things that I don't know about, but I will nominate the facial deformity of cleft palate. If you don't want to see what that looks like, know that most search engines and relevant web pages will show you pictures immediately, so go carefully. So I've only just informed myself that after a baby with this condition is "fixed", there are still issues that they have to deal with or live with, such as with speech and with hearing and with still not looking right. So it's not the example that I hoped to give of corrective surgery being super easy to do on a child once for all, unlike in this story. Other quite literal equivalents for this story are fistula and stoma, in different ways. I take it that surgery was attempted to remove the hole in Morgan, as it were, and the hole grew back.

It's more magical or fairy tale thinking that someone with a complementary defect, if I can say defect, can provide the cure for Morgan. If Morgan's physiology is normal except for the hole, she won't tolerate a transplant from someone else's body without suppressing or implausibly replacing her immune system, even if the patients are highly compatible. Rebuilding Morgan with other pieces of Morgan is better, but I assume they tried that. I did see a story recently which implied that bone is an exception for transplant; where someone was recommended dead donor bone instead of transferring some of their own bone material from here to there. Maybe Morgan's doctors already tried that, too.

Still, it's a story of extraordinary biology. But I don't think I'd swallow it as science fiction. But as science fiction, I'd want it to be about that, and on your telling and others, it is only somewhat. It's more of a romance novel with weird things happening.

Jacob HallerRobert Carnegie

I don't think it's really a romance novel, though there are some romantic relationships in it. I would describe it as more of a coming of age story.

This is not really relevant to the question of medical analogues, but, according to the author's website, one of the things that led to the writing of the book was that she unexpectedly getting a collapsed lung, and then found herself trying to hide the condition from everyone.

Jacob HallerRobert Carnegie

Regarding attempts to close the hole: The book indicates that they tried various grafts to close the hole, but the grafted tissue and skin (whether from her mother, another donor, or another part of her body) never took. The hole is described as being "about the size of a peach or a fist" and perfectly smooth.