A well-crafted remembrance that may be of most interest to those in the medical field.
A debut memoir of a physician grappling with a malpractice lawsuit.
Anyone who enjoys reading a gripping medical or legal thriller will find all the elements of a such a novel in these pages—compelling characters, a protagonist in peril, and dramatic suspense. However, this book tells the true story of a pathologist in private practice in a Dallas suburb who became a defendant in a $10 million malpractice lawsuit. It involved a 36-year-old woman who died of cancer after her Pap smear was misread. Spenser’s lab reviewed the slides, but he didn’t examine them personally, he says; he attributed the misdiagnosis to a physician assistant in another doctor’s office, whose error delayed a diagnosis of malignant cervical cancer. Three years of litigation ensued, and as the title promises, the author documents and records the agonizing, protracted litigation as it unwound, just as one would in the pages of a personal journal. Readers witness the toll that it takes on his family, his relationships with his colleagues, and his reputation in the medical community. He also effectively shows how he tried to define and make peace with himself during and after the lawsuit; in the happiest part of the memoir, he walks away from the medical profession, enrolls in film school, and begins a new career as a screenwriter—although he did eventually return to medicine. Throughout the book, the author displays considerable empathy for the patient but shows no sympathy for his own lawyer, or for the legal system in general; indeed, his oft-repeated “first rule of lawsuits” is: “No one knows anything.” The closing pages intriguingly call to mind the formulaic TV police drama, Dragnet, which regularly concluded with an epilogue showing what happened to all the people involved in the case at hand.
A well-crafted remembrance that may be of most interest to those in the medical field.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-578-64606-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Board Certified Press
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PROFILES
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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