Final Exam, by Pauline W. Chen. 8.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

An Asian-American surgeon’s memoir on the theme of the difficulty doctors, patients, and society have in coming to grips with death, and how this results in a lot of unnecessarily painful and unpleasant deaths for patients, trauma for their loved ones, and psychological unhealthiness in doctors.

The parts which I found most interesting were when she looked at attempts made to correct this, and tried to analyze why, so far, they have tended to be spectacularly ineffective. (One all-out effort, sustained for two years, produced no measurable results.) There’s no one reason for this, apparently, but contributing factors include doctors feeling that they’re already too busy and not seeing classes in relating to patients as a priority, no one wanting to think about death (patients included), the feeling that death is an admission of failure causing even less desire to think about it, and fear of lawsuits.

I read this book out of interest in the subject matter; it’s reasonably well-written but not so superbly so that I’d recommend it whether you’re interested in the topic or not. If you do have a prior interest or if you haven’t already read a lot of memoirs by doctors, this is a perfectly good book, meticulously researched, thoughtful, and honest. I was a little underwhelmed, but I’ve already read quite a few similar books and at this point it would take something pretty stellar to stand out from the pack. (Atul Gawande is the gold standard as far as I’m concerned.)

9/50: Trumpet by Jackie Kay

[livii.livejournal.com]

Trumpet is a novel told in short stories about the aftermath of the death of Joss Moody, famous black, male trumpet player, who is revealed after dying to be a female. The story deals with issues of identity in many ways - gender and sex, obviously, but also race, adoption, immigration, even being Scottish in London, and the outsider effect of being a musician, and a famous musician's son. The story principally follows Joss' adopted, mixed race son Colman and his white widow, Millie; Colman is trying to reconcile his father's hidden identity, and Millie is, very movingly, trying to come to terms with her grief while being besieged about the revelations about Joss. There are some terrific cameos as well by other characters who interact with these events; for example, the old housekeeper and later, Edith, who are both beautifully drawn. Kay has an amazing talent for creating these very stylized characters who leap off the page at you, vividly described.

I tend to enjoy the style of storytelling used here, and write it myself, but in a way the novel does suffer from the fact the plot is all reactionary; Joss is dead when the book opens, and though he gets to narrate a chapter, for a lot of the book I felt I enjoyed the characters but we weren't really building to any plot climax, and a bit of plot is a lovely thing! However, in a way it was nice to merely enjoy the stories, and the end did come together quite satisfyingly, without ever offering any pat answers, which it couldn't, not when dealing with such deep issues. Overall, this was enjoyable and thought-provoking.

There is one thing I did want to ask of anyone who might have read the book - but this is spoilery, so I'll cut it! ( Spoiler question )

When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago

[kyuuketsukirui.livejournal.com]

Title: When I Was Puerto Rican
Author: Esmeralda Santiago
Number of Pages: 274 pages
My Rating: 5/5

This is Esmeralda Santiago's memoir of growing up in Puerto Rico and moving to New York at age thirteen. It ends with her about to start high school and I assume the second of her three memoirs picks up from there. I'm eager to read it. I'm sure it will be as well-written and engaging as this was.