Short story writer and retired physician Ellman (Let Me Tell You About Angela, 2015) offers a novel about a wisecracking medical resident.
The subtitle of this first-person narrative is “Medicine Murder Revenge,” which successfully summarizes the themes that the author weaves through the text. Readers first meet Tadeusz “Dr. Ted” Shluzkinski in the fall of 1960, when he’s severely beaten on the street by two thugs. One of them delivers a parting explanation: “That’s for Betty.” He’s referring to Betty Schmidt, a patient whom Ted treated in the Chicago hospital where he’s currently doing his residency. Betty died suddenly and unexpectedly one night the previous summer, and Ted is convinced that her abusive husband, Tim Schmidt, murdered her. He orders an autopsy over the husband’s strenuous objections. Although the coroner finds nothing suspicious, Ted is undeterred and decides to approach a police detective, Sgt. George Esposito, whom one of his patients, an attorney, recommended. George tells Ted to stay away from Tim, a bad guy who he says is “connected”: “So, watch your step. Doc, be careful. Be extra careful!” The ongoing relationship between Ted and George forms the nexus of the novel’s murder and revenge subplots. The bulk of the text, however, revels in hospital antics and internal politics, as well as medical diagnoses and treatments. The story’s pace sometimes becomes bogged down with heavy use of professional jargon and detailed descriptions of the minutiae of hospital life, such as the bullying of residents by Mrs. B., who manages the cafeteria; the quick sexual trysts among staff members in between patient evaluations; and the affectations of various hospital personnel. It also takes a while to acclimate to Ellman’s habit of navigating back and forth in time. That said, Ted is an engaging character, outwardly cocky while inwardly fully aware of his own hype. Although the author never builds serious suspense, he nonetheless manages to come up with a believable surprise ending.
A tale that should appeal to fans of medical fiction, particularly those who’ve undergone the real-life rigors of hospital training.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Windy City Publishers
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
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Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Categories: GENERAL ROMANCE | ROMANCE | CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A flabby, fervid melodrama of a high-strung Southern family from Conroy (The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline), whose penchant for overwriting once again obscures a genuine talent. Tom Wingo is an unemployed South Carolinian football coach whose internist wife is having an affair with a pompous cardiac man. When he hears that his fierce, beautiful twin sister Savannah, a well-known New York poet, has once again attempted suicide, he escapes his present emasculation by flying north to meet Savannah's comely psychiatrist, Susan Lowenstein. Savannah, it turns out, is catatonic, and before the suicide attempt had completely assumed the identity of a dead friend—the implication being that she couldn't stand being a Wingo anymore. Susan (a shrink with a lot of time on her hands) says to Tom, "Will you stay in New York and tell me all you know?" and he does, for nearly 600 mostly-bloated pages of flashbacks depicting The Family Wingo of swampy Colleton County: a beautiful mother, a brutal shrimper father (the Great Santini alive and kicking), and Tom and Savannah's much-admired older brother, Luke. There are enough traumas here to fall an average-sized mental ward, but the biggie centers around Luke, who uses the skills learned as a Navy SEAL in Vietnam to fight a guerrilla war against the installation of a nuclear power plant in Colleton and is killed by the authorities. It's his death that precipitates the nervous breakdown that costs Tom his job, and Savannah, almost, her life. There may be a barely-glimpsed smaller novel buried in all this succotash (Tom's marriage and life as a football coach), but it's sadly overwhelmed by the book's clumsy central narrative device (flashback ad infinitum) and Conroy's pretentious prose style: ""There are no verdicts to childhood, only consequences, and the bright freight of memory. I speak now of the sun-struck, deeply lived-in days of my past.
Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1986
ISBN: 0553381547
Page Count: 686
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1986
Categories: LITERARY FICTION
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SEEN & HEARD
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