A touching, elegant novella about the struggles of an overworked doctor.
A realistic debut novella follows a dying teenager and the young doctor who cares for him.
Wu, a doctor, has fashioned a tale based on a true story. The plot revolves around 16-year-old Larry, who is dying of AIDS; he contracted HIV through a blood transfusion after he was shot in Memphis looking for his long-gone father. Enter an unnamed doctor: fresh out of medical school and following his Air Force girlfriend, he winds up at the Gulf Coast Family Health Center in Mississippi, a ramshackle, desperate place that survives on love and dedication. The clients are hardscrabble Southerners, the staff ridiculously overworked. The plot focuses not only on Larry’s difficulties, but also the travails of the young doctor, who was confident and egotistical at his Boston medical school and now copes with the real world of bare-bones budgets, well-used equipment, and culture shock. Diabetes runs rampant in the Mississippi woods, so the doctor must learn fast. His patients include Diane Johnson, who comes in for much-needed treatment but then disappears for weeks at a time, and Rosie Jordan, an extremely obese diabetic who leaves him touching, handmade gifts from “Your Little Cockroach.” Most of these stricken souls will not recover. Larry, a stoic patient who knows his life will soon end, and the empathetic doctor bond through their love of basketball. The teenage patient, shockingly emaciated, eventually dies, but with dignity. As a colleague says, “There was just something about Larry that made you feel a little better about yourself.” Illustrated with quaint pen-and-ink drawings, this polished novella gracefully evokes life along the Gulf Coast (the heat, the crawfish dinners). Wu, following in a long tradition of doctors who can write vividly, packs his poignant medical tale with believable relationships and convincing dialogue. Readers will have to decide for themselves whether Larry’s last wish is an appropriate and sufficient payoff. The real story, though, is not about Larry so much as it is the spiritual and moral education of the curiously unnamed young doctor. That is Wu’s best and most promising achievement. Readers should hope he has more stories to tell.
A touching, elegant novella about the struggles of an overworked doctor.Pub Date: July 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5025-8450-2
Page Count: 92
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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