by Philip Allen Green ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2015
Well-written stories about keeping one’s head and humanity amid the rawness of emergency medicine.
Sixteen short stories explore the urgent tensions of life and death in a rural hospital’s emergency room.
Although the stories and characters in emergency-medicine physician Green’s debut collection are fictional, he bases them on real experience, giving readers an insider’s look at a rural trauma ward. Unsurprisingly, several stories deal with loss, tragedy, and the difficulty of letting go. Others touch on misdiagnoses of character: a seemingly neglectful meth-head mother turns out to be a good Samaritan (“Saviors”); in “Family,” an alcoholic and annoying ER regular redeems himself by running off a threatening pill-seeker and becomes the hospital’s trusted security guard (“sometimes all a person needs is a chance to prove himself”). Big-city ERs are commonly the setting for medical dramas, so the particular challenges of an understaffed and remote emergency department will be less familiar to readers, and the stories exploring these particular challenges are among the collection’s strongest. “This is the only ER in town. I am the only ER doctor awake in the county right now,” writes the narrator (also called Dr. Green) in “The Crew.” He’s awakened at 2 a.m. for an incoming trauma: four teenagers dead or dying from a car accident on prom night. In the big city, a team of 20 specialists might be on hand; here, the trauma team is one doctor (himself), two nurses, and a respiratory tech. The title comes from a private joke—they call themselves “the crew that do,” which is “a quiet comfort in the middle of the night.” They need this comfort even more on this night; doing the math, Dr. Green realizes that there is a “one-in-fourteen chance that one of our kids was in that car.” It’s the paradoxical, poignant condition of their work that, to function well, they have become a tightknit family who can shut down their emotions—even if it could mean coding one of their own family members. Some stories veer beyond poignancy into the sentimental, however, as in “Transitions,” about a high-school athlete whose death motivates her team to win the state championship.
Well-written stories about keeping one’s head and humanity amid the rawness of emergency medicine.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-51-190002-7
Page Count: 162
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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