A good read, with interesting and credible characters working their way through the chaos of modern hospital life.
A sort of curried Scrubs, in which physician/novelist Nigam (The Snake Charmer, 1998) takes us on Grand Rounds through a New York City hospital staffed largely by Indian expatriates.
During his residency, Sonny Seth finds himself faced with weird conditions and even weirder patients every day and is given very little time to think about them. Raised in Arizona, Sonny is of Indian birth, but he never knew his father and seems more at ease with American culture than do many of his (largely Indian) patients. There’s Sonali, for instance, whose husband Nishad became so obsessed with her buttocks that he succumbed to temptation one night and took a bite out of one of them (which became badly infected). There’s the Comatose Patient, who is actually perfectly lucid but pretends to be unconscious to avoid dealing with his wife and mistress (who hate him). And the Transplanted Man, in for kidney dialysis, has over the years exchanged his lungs, corneas, pancreas, heart, and liver for new models. Minister of Health in the Indian government, the Transplanted Man is thought to have a good shot at becoming the next prime minister, but there are financial scandals in his past—and his opponents are making hay of his tendency to travel abroad for medical treatment. One of his regular visitors is the Uriah Heep-ish Sharad Kakkar, a Bollywood matinee idol who wants to enter politics and is trying to wrest an endorsement from the Transplanted Man’s feeble fingers. Sonny grows close to the Transplanted Man, who turns out to have more of a connection with him than he would have guessed. Nigam’s cast of characters is large enough to provide plenty of distraction (a psychotherapist named Dr. Guru; a scientist who may have discovered a cure for insomnia; etc.) but not too numerous to overwhelm.
A good read, with interesting and credible characters working their way through the chaos of modern hospital life.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-688-16819-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
Certain to create interest, comment, and consideration.
The Book-of-the-Month Club dual selection, with John Gunther's Behind the Curtain (1949), for July, this projects life under perfected state controls.
It presages with no uncertainty the horrors and sterility, the policing of every thought, action and word, the extinction of truth and history, the condensation of speech and writing, the utter subjection of every member of the Party. The story concerns itself with Winston, a worker in the Records Department, who is tormented by tenuous memories, who is unable to identify himself wholly with Big Brother and The Party. It follows his love for Julia, who also outwardly conforms, inwardly rebels, his hopefulness in joining the Brotherhood, a secret organization reported to be sabotaging The Party, his faith in O'Brien, as a fellow disbeliever, his trust in the proles (the cockney element not under the organization) as the basis for an overall uprising. But The Party is omniscient, and it is O'Brien who puts him through the torture to cleanse him of all traitorous opinions, a terrible, terrifying torture whose climax, keyed to Winston's most secret nightmare, forces him to betray even Julia. He emerges, broken, beaten, a drivelling member of The Party. Composed, logically derived, this grim forecasting blueprints the means and methods of mass control, the techniques of maintaining power, the fundamentals of political duplicity, and offers as arousing a picture as the author's previous Animal Farm.
Certain to create interest, comment, and consideration.Pub Date: June 13, 1949
ISBN: 0452284236
Page Count: 360
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1949
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
In the contest of Most Winning Combination, it would be hard to beat grumpy Ove and his hidden, generous heart.
Originally published in Sweden, this charming debut novel by Backman should find a ready audience with English-language readers.
The book opens helpfully with the following characterizations about its protagonist: “Ove is fifty-nine. He drives a Saab. He’s the kind of man who points at people he doesn’t like the look of, as if they were burglars and his forefinger a policeman’s torch.” What the book takes its time revealing is that this dyed-in-the-wool curmudgeon has a heart of solid gold. Readers will see the basic setup coming a mile away, but Backman does a crafty job revealing the full vein of precious metal beneath Ove’s ribs, glint by glint. Ove’s history trickles out in alternating chapters—a bleak set of circumstances that smacks an honorable, hardworking boy around time and again, proving that, even by early adulthood, he comes by his grumpy nature honestly. It’s a woman who turns his life around the first time: sweet and lively Sonja, who becomes his wife and balances his pessimism with optimism and warmth. By 59, he's in a place of despair yet again, and it’s a woman who turns him around a second time: spirited, knowing Parvaneh, who moves with her husband and children into the terraced house next door and forces Ove to engage with the world. The back story chapters have a simple, fablelike quality, while the current-day chapters are episodic and, at times, hysterically funny. In both instances, the narration can veer toward the preachy or overly pat, but wry descriptions, excellent pacing and the juxtaposition of Ove’s attitude with his deeds add plenty of punch to balance out any pathos.
In the contest of Most Winning Combination, it would be hard to beat grumpy Ove and his hidden, generous heart.Pub Date: July 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3801-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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