A somewhat bitter pill but a vital prescription for readers who want to know what really goes on in the critical-care ward.
Siegel, a doctor, uses fiction (inspired by an actual case he encountered as an internist) to air fetid linen in the medical profession.
Dr. Charlie White tries to do his best for a severely ill woman, but he fears her own brother seeks her death, assisted by a dysfunctional hospital culture. The setting is a Florida hospital, where White’s last-angry-man first-person narration tends to paint him as one of the few decent, compassionate individuals left practicing the healing arts. A somewhat scrambled flashback structure opens with the emergency admission of longtime patient Agnes Wellborne, felled by a stroke, among other serious medical issues. Short, bracing chapters recall memories of White’s work with the Wellborne family, chiefly the chronically ill Agnes, her sister, Marion, and their brother, Harris, a coldblooded lawyer who will inherit the estate if he survives his siblings. As Marion languishes in the background, suffering a mysterious environmental poisoning, Agnes, good-hearted wife and mother but a lifelong smoker with commensurate ailments, is hospitalized again and again, at one point facing a misdiagnosis of colon cancer; only Dr. White’s intercession prevents grueling, unnecessary therapy. In the present crisis, Harris seems eager for Agnes to receive all possible treatment, but White suspects the lawyer banks on the health care establishment’s own pathology—inexperienced EMTs, a vainglorious ICU physician, conceited and do-nothing surgeons—to ensure Agnes dies in a prolonged, hideous life-support ordeal. The situation brings White to an extreme crisis of conscience. Though the tale occasionally and jaggedly runs into mystery/crime-thriller territory—with characters who sometimes have only enough attributes to illustrate a painful point Siegel is trying to make—the novel has the voice of a medical insider who has firsthand knowledge and an urgent need to share his highly critical clinical chart. Several pages of footnotes and a glossary of terms will help readers see through the jargon.
A somewhat bitter pill but a vital prescription for readers who want to know what really goes on in the critical-care ward.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495460685
Page Count: 258
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 12, 2015
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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