Scan barcode
A review by yarnylibrarian
My Own Country: A Doctor's Story by Abraham Verghese
3.0
I picked this up after reading Cutting for Stone (twice) and seeing this TED Talk by Abraham Verghese: http://www.ted.com/talks/abraham_verghese_a_doctor_s_touch.html
I was absolutely gripped by this memoir of Verghese's early years of medical training (which are recalled in the characters of Marion Stone and his New York colleagues) and the early years of the U.S. AIDS outbreak. I lived through those years myself, but as a young teenager with only a cursory awareness of "the plague." My initial contact with an infected person came later, in college. And fortunately, the medical scenario (at least here in the U.S.) has changed hugely since then.
Verghese has a gift for telling people's stories, and there are many, many patient stories here. His approach to healing is holistic, so he takes time to learn a lot about his patients' personal lives. The patient stories bump along under a much wider arc of Verghese's story as a developing physician.
Toward the end, I was weary of the patient stories, which mostly end in horrific, wrenching deaths. But I don't begrudge the reading experience for a moment. It was true to life. I can see that Verghese is finding his narrative voice in this book (published in 1994). I eagerly await his next narrative synthesis!
I was absolutely gripped by this memoir of Verghese's early years of medical training (which are recalled in the characters of Marion Stone and his New York colleagues) and the early years of the U.S. AIDS outbreak. I lived through those years myself, but as a young teenager with only a cursory awareness of "the plague." My initial contact with an infected person came later, in college. And fortunately, the medical scenario (at least here in the U.S.) has changed hugely since then.
Verghese has a gift for telling people's stories, and there are many, many patient stories here. His approach to healing is holistic, so he takes time to learn a lot about his patients' personal lives. The patient stories bump along under a much wider arc of Verghese's story as a developing physician.
Toward the end, I was weary of the patient stories, which mostly end in horrific, wrenching deaths. But I don't begrudge the reading experience for a moment. It was true to life. I can see that Verghese is finding his narrative voice in this book (published in 1994). I eagerly await his next narrative synthesis!