A quiet novel of medicine and personal growth.
In Goetz’s (Bending the Twig, 2002) novel, a doctor is torn between his ambitions for groundbreaking research and his commitment to providing medical care in a rural community.
Goetz’s narrative follows Martin Cromlech from childhood in the 1960s through medical school to a successful career. After his sister Jenny’s death—attributed to physician error—motivates him to go into family practice in his Nebraska hometown, Martin sets off for medical school, where his skill and intelligence conflict with his disdain for the traditional curriculum and his impatience with his professors. A short-lived romance with classmate Diana is his only extracurricular activity. The book then moves ahead to the late 1970s; Martin is a star researcher in Chicago, drawing attention for his work treating hypertension while still wondering if he should practice medicine back home. A conflict with the new head of Martin’s lab, whose data and results Martin does not trust, as well as the reappearance of married but separated Diana finally push Martin into making a decision about where he belongs. The book delivers a compelling portrait of its place and time, and readers with medical backgrounds will enjoy the attention given to first-year dissections and the conversations among researchers discussing details of their work. Despite his early arrogance and lack of direction, Martin never becomes a truly unlikable character, and his redemption is effected through his fight for scientific truth and the humility he learns as he renews his relationship with Diana. The bulk of the narrative is character-driven, the plot taking lead toward the end as the conflict between researchers drives the story. The prose can be unpolished, with awkward phrasing—“Steady Alex Koenig…had even managed a small philosophical grin when an angry patient with wide-spread cancer fouled him with her feces”—and interactions that fall flat, including a cringe-worthy depiction of Japanese scientists: “Herro, Dr. Cromrech.” At other times, the prose is simply florid: “In his dark bedroom, drifting in that blurred margin between wakefulness and sleep, Martin James Cromlech fancied he heard, measured and far away, the spirit of Henry David Thoreau rhythmically applauding.”
A quiet novel of medicine and personal growth.Pub Date: May 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5089-7333-1
Page Count: 316
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these...
Figuratively and literally shattering moments of hoRRRRRipilication in Chamberlain, Maine where stones fly from the sky rather than from the hands of the villagers (as they did in "The Lottery," although the latter are equal to other forms of persecution).
All beginning when Carrie White discovers a gift with telekinetic powers (later established as a genetic fact), after she menstruates in full ignorance of the process and thinks she is bleeding to death while the other monsters in the high school locker room bait and bully her mercilessly. Carrie is the only child of a fundamentalist freak mother who has brought her up with a concept of sin which no blood of the Lamb can wash clean. In addition to a sympathetic principal and gym teacher, there's one girl who wishes to atone and turns her date for the spring ball over to Carrie who for the first time is happy, beautiful and acknowledged as such. But there will be hell to pay for this success—not only her mother but two youngsters who douse her in buckets of fresh-killed pig blood so that Carrie once again uses her "wild talent," flexes her mind and a complete catastrophe (explosion and an uncontrolled fire) virtually destroys the town.
King handles his first novel with considerable accomplishment and very little hokum—it's only too easy to believe that these youngsters who once ate peanut butter now scrawl "Carrie White eats shit." But as they still say around here, "Sit a spell and collect yourself."Pub Date: April 8, 1974
ISBN: 0385086954
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1974
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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