Customer Reviews

The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review

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A 2008 anthology of ~90 short stories, essays, and poems drawn from the NYU School of Medicine's semi-annual literary journal.

Each entry deals in some way with illness or coping, although sometimes minimally and often peripherally. There are doctors and hospitals, but most of the pieces are about people in ordinary community. Combined, they threaten toward darkness. Yet in the midst there's a hilarious, satirical fantasy, and poems that leave me with a "Wow!"

All of the writing is first-rate -- after nearly every entry, I found myself flipping to the contributor bios in the back to learn more about the writer. Highly recommended.

I would give a copy of this to everyone I know, and place it in every medical waiting room or attorney's office serving those with disability or injury. Articles and books by physicians, patients, and the family members and friends who care for injured or ill family members and friends appear everywhere. Best of the Bellevue Literary Review includes personal essays, poetry, and fiction by known and emerging authors and poets. Bellevue Literary Review, the magazine, is published by Bellevue Literary Press out of the New York University School of Medicine. I teach world literature, and also read literary and other magazines as fast as they are published. I have also cared for ill family members and others for most of my life. I rate Best of the Bellevue Literary Review at the top of the list both in the quality of the literature, and in the message conveyed.

For those who teach in medical humanities, this is an invaluable collection. The writings cover a wide range of topics, and the teaching guide is quite useful. And for those who don't teach, it' is a great read!

Katherine Taylor
Center for Bioethics, University of Pennsylvania

Wow, a great book if you're dealing with any health issues, honest "fiction" that is raw and real if you're going through the raw and real