An intriguing biography of a unique—and on Nantucket, irreplaceable—doctor.
In this absorbing debut, award-winning New York Times staff writer Belluck chronicles the daily life of a maverick physician and the Nantucket community he serves.
In addition to his job as head of medicine at Nantucket Cottage Hospital, Dr. Timothy Lepore, a general surgeon, also runs a family practice and serves as the physician for the high-school football team—those are only his official jobs. Not only is his role “central to the health and life of a community in ways that rarely occur these days,” writes the author, but it is also exemplary of the art of healing. “His unconventional story shows…that what really matters is the time, effort, conviction, and care that a doctor provides.” Lepore is a larger-than-life figure on Nantucket, and his quirks are the stuff of legend—e.g., he carves scalpels from obsidian using stone-age techniques, and he hunts with a pet hawk. Also legendary are his diagnostic skills and dedication to his patients. Over the 30 years that he has practiced medicine on the island, Lepore has dealt with medical emergencies at times when weather conditions prevented the transfer of a patient to a specialist on the mainland. He has treated celebrities on summer vacation, including members of the Kennedy family, but the year-rounders, many of whom work in low-wage jobs in the tourist industry, form the core of his practice. Widely traveled summer tourists may suffer exotic diseases that challenge his expertise, but depression, alcohol abuse and teen suicide are endemic on the island. Under Lepore's leadership, Nantucket’s hospital has played a crucial role in maintaining the community's health, but it is becoming less sustainable. “The cost of providing free care to poor and uninsured patients ha[s] grown by 60 percent,” writes Belluck. Notes the hospital’s CEO, “We kept up with the medical care, but not with the business of medical care.”
An intriguing biography of a unique—and on Nantucket, irreplaceable—doctor.Pub Date: May 29, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-58648-751-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2012
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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