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A review by red_magpie
My Own Country: A Doctor's Story by Abraham Verghese
5.0
This book pretty much fits the bill for my absolute favorite type of reading: passionate people writing beautifully about whatever they care most about and the way in which they are transformed by that caring. Also I love a good medical memoir so I hit the jackpot with this one.
I looked for this book after reading Verghese's Cutting for Stone recently. That novel was brilliant and, as I didn't want it to end, I went looking for more of Verghese's writing. It would be hard for me to say which book I enjoyed more. The novel was lovely and engaging, but the real life memoir was no less so.
There are so many themes in this book that it's hard to pin them all down but Verghese's exploration of what it means to belong to a place is perhaps the most poignant.
The book is filled with well drawn portraits of individuals struck by the first wave of HIV/AIDS and we get a sense of how both a doctor and a community are transformed.
I looked for this book after reading Verghese's Cutting for Stone recently. That novel was brilliant and, as I didn't want it to end, I went looking for more of Verghese's writing. It would be hard for me to say which book I enjoyed more. The novel was lovely and engaging, but the real life memoir was no less so.
There are so many themes in this book that it's hard to pin them all down but Verghese's exploration of what it means to belong to a place is perhaps the most poignant.
The book is filled with well drawn portraits of individuals struck by the first wave of HIV/AIDS and we get a sense of how both a doctor and a community are transformed.