entertaining, often scandalous portraits of doctors at work.
A collection of eight case studies revolving around questions of diagnosis and treatment, by Harvard physician and New Yorker writer Groopman (The Measure of Our Days, 1997).
Most doctors, if they write at all, write mainly about disease and cannot resist certain subjects. Groopman covers them all in eight chapters and a prologue, and they are cracking good stories. In the traditional when-I-got-sick essay, a patient’s insistence that physicians cure his slipped disk converts it to a permanent disability. A second story in this genre describes the nightmarish odyssey of Groopman, his wife, and their sick son as they search for a competent doctor over the course of a holiday weekend. The author encounters many tragedies along with a few triumphs. A woman dies of leukemia (misdiagnosed by her HMO) and, after failing to save her life, Groopman must defend himself against a frustrating malpractice suit. He discovers a rare but curable blood disease in a friend's father; unfortunately, local physicians have diagnosed it as a common, incurable condition. They resent his interference, and the patient declines to question their judgment. A young woman asks to be tested for the breast-cancer gene and discovers she has it. Can she prevent the inevitable by having her breasts removed? Groopman discusses the pros and cons, but the woman springs a surprise. Inevitably, literary doctors write of a personal encounter with aging: Groopman's grandfather descends into Alzheimer's, a sad tale of a beloved man growing repulsive and burdensome. Wisely, Groopman rarely addresses larger issues: he expresses admiration for the busy family physician, although those in his book are mostly blunderers; he denounces HMOs that deal with skyrocketing costs by cutting benefits, but he offers no alternative plan of action. His focus is more specific than general. Not profound literature, yet undeniably fascinating: Groopman has a good ear and a dramatic flair, and he delivers
entertaining, often scandalous portraits of doctors at work.Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-670-88801-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
Sheila, the mute, abused six-year-old protagonist of Hayden's bestselling One Child (not reviewed), returns in a fast- paced, real-life narrative that rewards the reader with a happy ending. The author begins with a brief review of the five months Sheila spent in her special education class. Abandoned by her mother (who pushed her out of a car onto the highway), regularly mistreated by her father's friends and drug suppliers, the troubled child had set fire to a smaller boy. Hayden established a close relationship with Sheila, bringing her out of her silence and seeing her enrolled in a regular classroom, but then left town to attend graduate school. When she meets Sheila again, the girl is a punk fashion plate of 14, still living with her father. Sheila denies most memories of her early relationship with the teacher, but they pursue a shaky friendship, though Hayden is worried by an undercurrent of anger not really explained by Sheila's expression of hurt over her departure eight years earlier. The teen provokes a crisis in the summer school program where they both work when she disappears for several days with a young student, resurrecting fears of the earlier fire-setting incident. This leads to a startling revelation: Muddling her memories of abandonment, Sheila believes it was Hayden who pushed her out of the car. She launches a disastrous search for her mother and spends time in a high-security institution for problem children, but eventually graduates from high school and begins a successful career managing a fast-food restaurant. Her adventures occur against the background of Hayden's love affairs and work in a psychiatric clinic, revealing the author as neither the self- sacrificing saint Sheila accuses her of wanting to be, nor much of a sinner. An effective chronicle of a relationship full of potholes that nonetheless brings both student and teacher further along the road to maturity.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-02-549150-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A forceful examination of women who find in their 40s and 50s a psychological growth hormone to replace lost estrogen. Apter (Working Women Don't Have Wives, 1993, etc.) chose 80 British and American women between the ages of 39 and 55 for this study, interviewing and observing them over approximately four years. Although most students of women at midlife choose 50 as a point of departure, Apter believes it is in their 40s that women begin to reassess their lives and their choices. Her subjects are classified into four role types: the traditional, who tend to cast themselves as mothers, wives, helpers; the innovators, career women pioneering in the working world of men; the expansive, who break away from past patterns and set new goals; and the protestors, who try to harness powerful adolescent energy constrained earlier by circumstance. What all these subjects have in common is an urge at some point in their 40s to reevaluate their lives, first with alarm, then with resignation, and finally with determination to face change and take risks. As a result of these internal, often unvoiced struggles, subtle shifts in attitude may herald dramatic revisions of lifestyle, like turning down a long-sought law partnership, or more delicate fine-tuning of personal relationships. The introductory chapter is an outstanding synopsis of the new context in which women find themselves: a society that still renders women over 50 invisible, but in which those very women are filled with energy, hope, and a willingness ``to construct a new self and a new future.'' Apter tends to dismiss menopause as a midlife marker, ignoring the fact that it may trigger the painful but rewarding process of reappraisal that she describes. For middle-class women over 40, a sometimes eloquent, always readable mirror of their struggle to come to terms with growing older in a society still oriented to youth and beauty. (Author tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-03766-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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