Customer Reviews

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures: Stories

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

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.

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!

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

Dr. Vincent Lam is a physician not only in my hometown but at the hospital a few blocks from my house. My hometown bias was ready to like this book.

This is a series of short stories about doctors as they progress from med school through various stages of their careers. The characters are connected but, for the most part, each story stands on its own.

Dr. Lam does give an interesting depiction of life as a doctor including the sleep deprivation, cynical attitudes, genuine caring and complete obsession.

A few of the stories are great. I especially liked the troubled delivery and one about the doctors with SARS. There are several complete throwaway stories as well.

In the end, I think Lam misses the mark on character depth. We don't really get to know what drives these characters other than what one could see in any TV show. The characters are cliched and very difficult to care about.

Though parts of the book were exciting, I doubt I will think much about this book again.

Nobody but a doctor could have written such a heartfelt depiction of the experiences of fresh, new interns, what leads them into medicine and what happens after they've chosen their fields. Dr. Lam has chosen the linked short story format instead of that of a novel, which works well here, creating episodic experiences that knit together into a cohesive whole. His four young doctors have diverse reasons for entering medicine and equally diverse reactions to the Canadian medical system, to each other, and to their careers. Highly recommended.

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures is a solid collection of short stories by Vincent Lam, a practicing doctor in Toronto. Set in his hometown, the stories feel more like chapters in a loosely told novel, revolving around four Toronto doctors, than a standard short story collection. The stories are largely engaging, intelligent and readable, unfortunately a few of them also feel a bit forgettable, emotionally aloof and none of them feel much deeper than an episode of ER or Grey's Anatomy. When looked at as a whole, as a collection of connected stories, the narrative thread running through all the stories feels unresolved. As well, while the stories revolve around the aforementioned doctors we only really get a sense of who two of them are, even then Lam often keeps us at a distance from them. Often times all four doctors feel more like plot devices to help deliver medical intrigue than living, breathing, multi-dimensional characters. However, the book isn't about creating great characters or spinning fantastic yarns - its intention is to capture what it feels like to be a doctor and in this the book succeeds. Vincent Lam is a talented writer and when he gets some material to wrap his considerable skills around he may find it more lucrative to move his practice from the hospital to his den, writing full time.

This is a collection of short stories with overlapping characters. The stories trace the lives of four medical students that become doctors. Lam, a doctor himself, incudes plenty of realistic medical detail, and the characters are complex and interesting. I think I would have preferred this as a novel. As a short story collection, the effect is like a strobe light on an intricate drama. Certain vignettes are revealed in the bright light during a particular period of time, but then darkness falls again, and the interconnectivity of the whole can never be fully felt or understood.

I found these interconnected stories very moving. Most doctor stories don't seem real to me. In these stories, it was the first story that I had a hard time getting into, but the others were excellent, and the twist on SARS really worked. As a physician, I usually don't read medical fiction because it is too hard to suspend disbelief as is so often required of fiction. It this case, I didn't feel like I needed to.

I am usually not a fan of the short story genre, but I read this book because I'm working my way through the Giller Prize Winner list. This book won in 2006. It is certainly a different look at medicine and the moral and ethical dilemmas that the people in this profession face on a daily basis. I can understand why the book won the award even though I didn't really care for it that much. The series of stories in the book are connected by the four medical students and the course of their careers once they qualify as physicians. I did enjoy the story about SARS the most (Contact Tracing). I found it gave me a whole new insight into this virus and how it was handled when it came to Canada. There is black humour in this book and I like the way that Lam introduces this into the serious subjects that he is addressing. This is definitely a literary gem with a totally captivating topic (medicine in Canada).

Vincent Lam's collection of linked short stories is fascinating and occasionally downright amazing. Nothing is predictable and much is off-putting about the four young characters and their experiences as they become doctors, but one becomes oddly at home with their ways, their medical world, and the weird combinations of hope and bleakness, of adrenaline and numbness, of intimacy and isolation that the stories offer. Lam writes beautifully and knowledgeably; this is an impressive and award-winning achievement for a first fiction by this Canadian doctor. After devouring a borrowed copy, I knew I had to have extra copies for my own bookshelf and for gifts.