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3.85 AVERAGE
3.85 AVERAGE
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Content Warnings
Minor: Suicide
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
Too much self-centric rambling and not enough about the doctor and his patients. A missed opportunity even though the photography does them some justice.
Almost bounced off the opening due to the way the female patients were described — couldn’t tell if it was Berger or the doctor’s view — but the majority of the book is an interesting meditation on the moral and personal politics of a country doctor’s life.
It and the accompanying photographs are also a great document of a practice that has now long gone.
It’s worth reading as a unique effort.
It and the accompanying photographs are also a great document of a practice that has now long gone.
It’s worth reading as a unique effort.
A startlingly humane portrait of a doctor practising medicine in rural England in the 1960s - the type of universalist country doctor (part priest, part magician, part healer) that doesn't exist anymore.
Berger writes intelligently and empathetically about what it is to heal, what makes a good doctor (as opposed to "talented" or "clever"), and how we evaluate the worth of a human life. Jean Mohr's observant, un-intrusive photographs are just as much a part of the essay as Berger's words are.
Berger writes intelligently and empathetically about what it is to heal, what makes a good doctor (as opposed to "talented" or "clever"), and how we evaluate the worth of a human life. Jean Mohr's observant, un-intrusive photographs are just as much a part of the essay as Berger's words are.
I thought there would be more medical stuff in it, but it was still a good read. More sociological than medical.
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
informative
reflective
slow-paced
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
a little slower than other Berger I've read, but his quiet meditation on the life of this doctor slowly opens up to ethnography, child psychology, and an observation of humanity that speaks to every person trying to leave this world better than it was.