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Winner of the 2006 Giller Prize, Lam has assembled a collection of short stories that follows four characters from their student days, through medical school and into their careers as doctors. Ming is a perfectionist with a dark past and overbearing traditional parents. When she starts dating Fitz, she must keep it a secret from her family. Meanwhile, Chen and Sri, their closest colleagues, join them in cutting up cadavers as they learn the fragile mysteries of the human body. Lam’s prose reads as smoothly as a scalpel slicing flesh (despite a plethora of technical jargon) as he reveals the realities of operating and emergency rooms, air ambulance flights and maternity wards. Lam is capable of fine descriptions (the "melon color" of afternoon light) as well as striking awkwardness ("Entering the exam hall…from the whipping chaos of the snowstorm was to be faced with a void.") The power of these stories is his ability to allow the reader to empathize with both victim and healer. Although a few of the stories feel like scenes from ER, several work extremely well. A harrowing story about the SARS epidemic ("Contact Tracing"), set in a Toronto hospital, gives the reader an intimate, inside view, while a story that explores the mind of a psychotic ("Winston") can leave the reader feeling unnerved and groundless. --Mark Frutkin
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Winner of Canada's Giller Prize, Lam puts all the sex, and death and sleep deprivation crucial to any hospital drama in his debut story collection about doctors in the making. Thankfully Lam, an emergency room physician, looks beyond blood and guts to examine the conflicted hearts and minds of the four medical students sleepwalking their way through the required tests, dissections and all-night emergency room shifts. The stories trace an almost endless stretch of education and service that puts their stamina and skills to the test: Fitz (short for Fitzgerald) has a not-so-secret drinking problem, the fallout from which that lands him an unexpected job; Ming, the main cast's only woman, has a cold scientist's outlook that both aids and hinders her; Sri's heart breaks for anything that comes near his scalpel—be it a tattooed cadaver or a rambling psychotic; and dispassionate Chen struggles, like Sri, to balance compassion with his desire to succeed. The stories' quiet strength lies not in the doctors' education but in Lam's portrayal of the flawed humans behind the surgical masks. This collection made a big splash in Canada, and, as Weinstein Books' first title, is poised to do the same in the U.S. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
14 of 19 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
A bit average,
This review is from: Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures: Stories (Paperback)
This collection of short stories has some interesting moments, but the book is highly uneven, with some weak work towards the center that gets a bit better towards the end. This collection is not for readers who seek a memorable literary experience. The work is more akin to a reality TV show, and relies heavily on the drama that medicine affords gratis instead of literary virtuosity or masterful story telling.
7 of 9 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Average tale of the medical world,
By B. NH (Ottawa, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures: Stories (Paperback)
As a medical student myself, I did not find this collection of short stories to be that powerful, captivating nor truly interesting. It was a quick read, but the characters weren't memorable. The stories are life-like, but seeing as I live this everyday, didn't find the stories too entertaining.For medical stories, I preferred Complications by Atul Gawande. Despite Complications' documentary style, it was informative, funny and enlightening.
17 of 24 people found the following review helpful
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dissonant,
By G. Thomas (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures: Stories (Paperback)
This review is based on the first hundred pages or so (the first four stories), since I felt that was an appropriate amount of time spent waiting to be captivated, impressed, compelled to continue reading. Sadly I was not.Reading this book has helped me to define the saying "Don't let the truth get in the way of a good story". To explain: it is obvious that Lam has taken stories or anecdotes directly from what he has seen or heard in the medical field. With this I have no problem. But I can see where his desire to inform impedes on the story. To speak musically, the leitmotif of his Take All of Murphy is the scene where the characters suffer the moral dilemma of either satisfying medical procedure and cutting through the symbol (tattoo) of a man's life, or harmlessly slicing around it. An excellent idea (in fact it was someone's summary of that idea which moved me to pick up the book in the first place). Every little inflection and melody of the story should revolve around this moment. But Lam creates great discord by straying from the truth and trailing off into exposition. All of the italicised parts of this story (where we are shown snippets of past interviews and such) should have been cut. There is an overall sense of weakness in the prose. A lightness. There is no, shall I say, muscle to it. This critique serves well for the first four stories I read. Some had good ideas (for this Lam earns a star), but they were drawn out, lost somewhere in mediocre craft, poor pacing, and a missing sense for mood.
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