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porphyrinThis is one of those books that you're either going to love, or you're going to hate. I'd love to hate it, but I find myself smirking and telling it, "Oh my god, you are SUCH a surgeon." about every third page.
It's a decent memoir, if you like train of thought, slightly incoherent memoirs full of sentence fragments, paranthetical asides, and casual use of medical acronyms (half of which are explained). Due to the grammatical issues and structural issues I had with it, I wanted to hate it. I really did.
But then there's the thing that is making me post about it, and place a review: the narrative voice.
HEALING HEARTS sounds like just about every female surgeon I know. It's a window into the world of women in medicine. There's a beautiful section in which Dr. Magliato takes on (and then bulls right through) the topic of sexism in medicine, and the way nurses relate to female doctors. As if to balance that out, in other spots in the book where horrible sexist things happen, she almost makes excuses for it-- the way that almost all women doctors have been trained to do.
Definitely worth a read if you're going to put a female surgeon -- or perhaps any female physician-- into your WIP.
A small excerpt (yes, indicative of 'shared medical humor'):
Television has always set the bar high for surgeons' sexual prowess and I for one would like to set the record straight so as not to disappoint my next conquest. (Oh. That's right. I'm married.) Someone once described Grey's Anatomy as "ER meets Sex & the City". I'd say that is a pretty fair assessment. My mom religiously watches Grey's Anatomy and every other medical television drama and now firmly believes:
A. You can drop an organ on the floor. Pick it up. Wash it off. And transplant it into the patient as if nothing happened.
B. I must be a slut.
Thanks, ABC.
(insert sound of me saying again, "Oh my GOD you are such a SURGEON.")
It's a decent memoir, if you like train of thought, slightly incoherent memoirs full of sentence fragments, paranthetical asides, and casual use of medical acronyms (half of which are explained). Due to the grammatical issues and structural issues I had with it, I wanted to hate it. I really did.
But then there's the thing that is making me post about it, and place a review: the narrative voice.
HEALING HEARTS sounds like just about every female surgeon I know. It's a window into the world of women in medicine. There's a beautiful section in which Dr. Magliato takes on (and then bulls right through) the topic of sexism in medicine, and the way nurses relate to female doctors. As if to balance that out, in other spots in the book where horrible sexist things happen, she almost makes excuses for it-- the way that almost all women doctors have been trained to do.
Definitely worth a read if you're going to put a female surgeon -- or perhaps any female physician-- into your WIP.
A small excerpt (yes, indicative of 'shared medical humor'):
Television has always set the bar high for surgeons' sexual prowess and I for one would like to set the record straight so as not to disappoint my next conquest. (Oh. That's right. I'm married.) Someone once described Grey's Anatomy as "ER meets Sex & the City". I'd say that is a pretty fair assessment. My mom religiously watches Grey's Anatomy and every other medical television drama and now firmly believes:
A. You can drop an organ on the floor. Pick it up. Wash it off. And transplant it into the patient as if nothing happened.
B. I must be a slut.
Thanks, ABC.
(insert sound of me saying again, "Oh my GOD you are such a SURGEON.")
