The Resurrection Men

Every reader remembers that this novel is called A Tale of Two Cities. Atwood is more interested in what it keeps whispering: recalled to life. Her claim in this episode is that Jerry Cruncher, the bank messenger who moonlights digging up corpses for the anatomy schools, is not comic relief at all. He is the book's title, working a night shift. Along the way: Burke and Hare, a funeral that becomes a riot, Twitter mobs, and the day a television host in Quebec talked Margaret Atwood into donating her own body, on camera, in French.