Now in paperback: Twelve interwoven stories follow four young and ambitious doctors as they move from the challenges of medical school to the intense world of emergency rooms, evacuation missions, and terrifying new viruses. They fall in love as they study for their exams, face moral dilemmas as they split open cadavers, confront police who rough up their patients, and treat schizophrenics with pathologies similar to their own. Winner of the prestigious Giller Prize, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures marks the arrival of a deeply humane and preternaturally gifted writer.
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Lam's Giller Prize–winning debut, a veritable cornucopia of interesting characters, voices and effects, presents a formidable burden for a single reader. Through the four main sleep-deprived characters, we wind our way through med school and beyond. Lane sculpts a precise and colorful aural identity for every character, regardless of their significance. A master of capturing nuances in vocal personality, he ranges from a strong, stiff Chinese-American accent to a lisping, muttering paranoid schizophrenic in a heartbeat, and nothing seems forced. At one point, a doctor speaking to a patient in German-accented Hindi influenced English he learned in Bombay seems like an narrator's bar bet or a challenge from the author. But Lane pulls it off perfectly, with grace and pluck. Occasionally, Lane's conjuring is amped up with unnecessary special effects (a hollow distortion when dialogue is heard over the phone) that would be distracting if both the author and the reader were anything less than solid and riveting. The combination of Lane and Lam is a winning one, a performance not to be missed.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Vincent Lam joins the ranks of doctor-writers with his award-winning debut novel. Compared to the popular TV dramas Grey's Anatomy, House, and ER, Bloodletting (set to become a Canadian TV drama itself) offers an intriguing look at na•ve doctors' lives and aspirations while showcasing the humanity and daily dilemmas they face. In both humorous and worst-case scenarios, Lam depicts how students plot their way into med school, develop strange ties to cadavers, break terrible news to patients' families, second-guess all their actions, collaborate against their consciences, and deal with life-threatening illnesses of their own. Although a few critics cited flat dialogue, Bloodletting offers a compelling and insightful view of the medical profession.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Captivating and insightful short story collection,
By
This review is from: Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures: Stories (Paperback)
Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that he had trouble ending short stories in ways that would satisfy a general public. The dilema of how to end a short story and not leave the reader feeling unfulfilled is an enourmous challenge for any writer. Admittedly, I felt unfulfilled by some of the stories in Vincent Lam's Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, but for the most part I found this collection facinating and highly entertaining.
Lam draws on his own experience as an emergency room physician and provides an insider's view into the challenges of medical school and the demands of being a physician. Lam introduces the reader to four young medical students and follows them through twelve loosely woven stories. Readers expecting Bloodletting to resemble a novel, where each story is linked to the last may be disappointed. The first three stories follow this format, but while each story does feature at least one of the four young doctors, there is little connection between the remaining 9 stories. Like all short story collections, some are better than others. The strongest stories (`Eli', `Night Flight', and `Before Light') are the ones that explore how ethically complicated being a physician can be. Lam's writing is fresh, insightful, and often touched with humor. I particularly enjoyed the movie scenes that Fritz imagines, while longing for his former girlfriend in `How to Get in Medical School Part II', and the highly entertaining story of Chen's grandfather in a `Very Long Migration' (which sounds like it may be the basis for Lam's first novel). While a little uneven at times, overall Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is a captivating, insightful look at the complicated, challenging, and emotionally draining world of medicine. I look forward to Lam's debut novel.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No Other Book Like It,
By Rick (Manchester, NH) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures: Stories (Hardcover)
I first heard of this book when I read about it winning Canada's top literary prize--I thought it unusual that a full-time doctor could write such acclaimed fiction, so I asked a Toronto friend to send me a copy and I'm glad this is now out in the States. The stories are beautiful, intelligent, and often darkly humorous in a way that reminded me of Nathan Englander, Jhumpa Lahiri, David Schickler, and Adam Haslett. But what sets this apart is how it takes you deep into the world of doctors--how they feel and think in relation to each other and their patients. It follows four young doctors during medical school and then into their early careers. There's romance, crazy patients, tense ER moments, mundane patient/doctor conversations that take on a deeper meaning. Really just everything a doctor might encounter, seen through their eyes. This lingered with me much longer than any episode of ER, HOUSE, or Grey's Anatomy ever did--definitely worth a look!
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"You should respect a man's symbols",
By
This review is from: Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures (Paperback)
The practice of medicine offers endless scope for a writer--the chaos of sudden illness, the smoke and mirrors of technology, and the blend of empathy and toughness in the characters of those who succeed in this challenging field. Canadian author Vincent Lam's credentials as an emergency physician give Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures the ring of truth, though it's a work of fiction; I was halfway throught the book before realizing that it's not a novel but a collection of short stories, closely linked by the cast of four main characters and by the chronological arrangement. We meet Ming and Fitz during their college years in Toronto. Ming's family expects only the best from her, and her demands on herself are even greater. She will never allow her love affair with Fitz to interfere with getting into medical school. In the second story, Chen and Sri join Ming in the dissection lab where they bond with (and argue over) their cadaver. These four young people are showcased throughout the book. Though the stories are linked, they vary in mood. The rigors of medical school and residency feature in the early stories. "A Long Migration" is a vignette of Chen's Chinese family. Several stories feature patients and their troubles. In "Night Flight," Fitz flies with a medical evac team. Possibly the best of the bunch is "Contact Tracing," a strobe-like string of impressions from the Toronto SARS epidemic; in this year of H1N1 fears, it had an ominous reality. Some of the stories were very satisfying to me, but overall the book seemed a bit uneven. It feels like a book that would have been a novel if the author had taken the time to integrate it more fully; a book that SHOULD have been a novel. Ming and Fitz are vividly drawn at the beginning of the book, and though the characters do change and grow, I felt that I knew them less well at the end of the book.than at the beginning. The situations took center stage, rather than the characters. This might have worked better with a more independent set of short stories. This debut book won Canada's Giller Prize in 2006. I wavered between three and four stars, deciding on four because when it's good it's very good. I'm looking forward to more from Vincent Lam. Linda Bulger, 2009
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