Customer Reviews

Remedies

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an exquisitely written, urbane novel that has teeth to it--cutting incisors that bite and sting and leave their marks right down to the marrow and bone (and into your heart). With sinewy, spiked prose and metaphors that melt in your mouth, Remedies seizes you from the first sentence and moves tautly with each ensuing page. There is not one bland, banal, or stale phrase in this book. It's clean and scrubbed, tangy and citric; moreover, it migrates under your skin. The pages flutter and fly as you descend into depths as sharp and barbed as a large bore needle.

Simon Bear, who is a (internist) doctor, and his wife, Emily, a (PR) spin-doctor, are successful at their careers. However, their marriage is bleeding out--they suffered a tremendous blow sixteen years ago and still have old, gnawing wounds that prevent the healing process from taking root. Their thirteen year-old-daughter, Jamie, has sullenly retreated from their love and their lives and is also maimed by their psychic torment.

Simon's coping strategies include starting projects or hobbies at full speed ahead and then dropping them cold. In the basement are his abandoned projects, along with the fragments of the pain he shares with Emily. His new enterprise is winemaking, which he plans on doing with Jamie and surprising his wife with when he has the wine bottled. He desires to earn back her attention and respect, but he again becomes sidetracked by his patients--he believes he has stumbled upon the cure for chronic pain.

Meanwhile, Emily feels guilty for not having maternal instincts. She loves Jamie but cannot knock down that wall between them. She is convinced that her daughter hates her and that it is too late for them to forge a bond. Instead, they communicate with a dreadful silence or stilted sarcasm.

This story is largely about pain, in all its physical and emotional contours--acute, chronic, dormant, breakthrough, intermittent, repressed, ransacked--individual and universal. Simon's private agony is redirected to his devotion to his patients and his personal crusade to cure their chronic pain. But there is also a burning, subconscious agenda running underneath Simon's goodwill that threatens to subvert his best intentions. In the meantime, Emily has found her own salve, evading her pain by recoiling from her family. Eventually, the woeful tailspin they have created will confront them with the troubled past and threaten to precipitate a fatal future.

Kate Ledger writes with a whip and holds her stride with a balletic rhythm; she alternates from Emily's story to Simon's with the alacrity of a gazelle, delivering a wry, ironic, and epigrammatic narrative ringed with an aching pathos that trembles and intoxicates the reader. The gaps fill in gradually, with impeccable timing, opening up periodic core glimpses into the Bears' bedrock distress. Unputdownable.

Addendum: For anyone who lives with chronic pain or loves anyone who suffers from chronic pain, this is a must-read. This is the first novel that I have read that educates and advocates the compassionate and generous use of opioids for intractable pain--pain that does not respond to any other treatment. At the risk of sermonizing here, I have seen the effects of inconsolable pain on people who have been harmfully denied necessary medication (I am an RN). Even many health care professionals (MD's, RN's, adjunct therapists) do not apprehend this. (And many MD's who do advocate for the patient and prescribe narcotics are getting negatively audited and flagged by the DEA.) Often, patients are shamed with pious moralizing about addiction or accused of "med-seeking" or outright lying. This novel, as well as being highly entertaining, will vividly edify the reader about pain--anything and everything you thought you knew but probably didn't. And, hopefully, this story will have a helping hand in giving people who feel hopeless, who have suffered a reduced quality of life--assistance and dignity and hope.

In "Remedies," Kate Ledger has written a stark portrait of a devastated marriage. Devastated by the spouses' inability to overcome their pasts, both as individuals and as a couple... Devastated by the spouses' self-absorption... Devastated by the spouses' narcissisms... Devastated by the spouses' self-delusions... This, in a nutshell, sums up "Remedies."

Dr. Simon Bear, a respected physician, is driven by his need for acceptance and affirmation. Conceived at a time when unwed mothers were considered "ruined," Simon has been raised by the stepfather who married his mother while she was pregnant. Having never felt a part of his mother and stepfather's close relationship, Simon continues, without success, to seek their approval. Thus, he is unable to remedy his own emotional pain. Failing to obtain his parents' approval, Simon focuses on satisfying his patients' need for relief from physical pain and basks in their adulation. Simon throws himself into his work, deluding himself into the belief that only he understands and empathizes with them. And so, in providing a remedy for his patients' anguish, Simon attempts to provide an alternate remedy for his own pain.

Focusing on his patients' physical pains, Simon is oblivious to his wife's silent anguish. Emily, successful as a partner in a public relations firm, is torn by her unexpressed pain and by the realization that her marriage is a hollow shell. Her pain - hiding her father's psychological illness and subsequent suicide, failing to mourn the death of their infant son Caleb, being emotionally separated from their daughter Jamie - serves as a catalyst for renewing an affair with a former lover. Only when Jamie almost dies as the result of an infection and only when Emily's lover returns to his wife, does Emily confront her demons and move forward with a new life. She has truly found the remedy for her pain.

I found both Simon Bear and his parents to be unappealing individuals who never allow their focus to move beyond their own worlds. They never become well-rounded individuals or exhibit any personal growth. Even in the final scene, when Simon is leaving the synagogue to seek Emily's forgiveness, he "felt certain he would know what to say..." In my opinion, Simon remains an individual who believes he is always correct and can see no one other than himself. Emily is a more strongly written character who grows through the novel and is able to move beyond her self interest. She becomes someone to respect.

"Remedies" is an intelligent, well written book; but, it is not an entertaining book. Rather, it is an emotionally draining look at a marriage which has been allowed to languish and die.

Remedies is a book about pain, in all its different manifestations: chronic physical pain, emotional pain, pain that permeates through marriages and lifes and throughout bodies. Ms. Ledger's debut novel focuses squarely on unacknowledged grief and unresolved pain through the microcosm of the family and the macrocosm of the medical world.

Simon Bear is a well-loved internist who is willing to go to great lengths to alleviate his patients' suffering, operating his respected Baltimore practice from a built-on wing of his magnificent and historic home. His wife, Emily, is a partner in a prestigious PR firm who handles corporate crises with aplomb but cannot handle a crisis that's brewing in her own home: the growing rebelliousness of her 13-year-old daughter, Jamie. Neither of them has been able to successfully navigate the death of Caleb, their first-born infant son; nor can Simon truly connect to his out-of-state parents, who believe he is pushing through all their boundaries.

Through a quirk of fate, Simon stumbles across a trial drug that appears to be the panacea for pain. But he has a new assistant -- someone who is dead-set against experimentation and opiates for the chronically pain-laden patients -- who is setting herself up to be his downfall. (In one of the least convincing passages toward the beginning, Simon kisses her, bringing in the potential of a harassment suit). Simon says, "People shouldn't be forced to suffer. I don't believe they should be told to keep a stiff upper lip, or tough it out. Life is hard enough and long-term pain doesn't do any good for the person who's experiencing it. Ask any doctor, any good doctor, any doctor telling the truth, and they'll admit that opioids work best. They're the gold standard for pain relief." While Simon dedicates himself ironically to a "cure for pain", his wife is trying to dull her own pain through an affair with an old boyfriend.

Ms. Ledger -- who worked for several years as the senior writer at the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, according to the book blurb -- knows her way around the world of pain. She knows how pain can destroy a life. (I learned this first-hand during one unfortunate year.) And she's willing to push her characters into the fray and take important stands. She also writes impressively about the dissolution of a marriage when two people just want to push themselves forward without examining their grief.

She makes one error that's common to debut novelists: she stage directs instead of trusting the reader to "read" her characters' emotions. Her characters "announce", or "sing out", or "quip" or "chime in" or "belt out" or "demand." She often states rather than suggests what her characters are feeling. I trust that as she moves forward, she will empower the reader more in this regard. Still, she deserves kudos for taking on a weighty subject and executing it with empathy and assurance.

Meet Simon and Emily Bear. From the outside, they appear to have everything that a couple and family could want. Successful careers, beauty, money ... but with all of that, they still find themselves stuck in the middle of a marriage that has lost much of it's spark and life that has lost some of it's meaning. Through a solid character and plot development, we can enter into the lives of the Bears and feel their angst and pain. Working through unresolved grief, they search for life's purpose around every corner trying to find it through professional life and relationships.

We discover their search for meaning and quickly learn that Simon's and Emily's plights are not far from our own. Different lives, different stories ... but very much a search for that spark through the day-to-day mundane. The story feels very real.

You would never guess that "Remedies" is Kate Ledger's first work of fiction! She does such a fantastic job of creating a readable, medically believable, unstoppable book. It's the type of work filled with intense feeling, issues that need to be worked out and relationships fraught with tension. I absolutely loved it and look forward to the next Ledger novel!

I was very impressed with the debut of author Kate Ledger. Not only did she create a fully fleshed out, plausible and well-researched world for her characters to inhabit, but she also did it with clever and elegant prose. Sometimes a novel has a great story but is clumsily written. Other times, the writing is beautiful but the story falls short. Ledger succeeds in both style and narrative with Remedies. Once I began reading, I couldn't put the book down. I didn't always like the main characters, but I definitely wanted to understand them and found myself rooting for them to learn from their plentiful mistakes, to avoid the tragedies looming, and to find love and acceptance. The book is not a feel-good read, but it paints a portrait of a family whose members have each reached a turning point at which there is hope for change. I hope there will be more to come from this talented writer.

"Remedies" will keep your book club talking long into the night. Ledger has written a beautiful account of a marriage in crisis and a family in pain. Her character, Simon, soars to extraordinary heights of arrogance as he uses his patients to search for a cure for chronic pain. Just when Simon seems beyond all limits of medical ethics, Ledger reveals the complexity of her character, and his compassion for the people whose lives have been consumed by physical agony. Simon and his wife, Emily, provide endless material for a great discussion as the reader witnesses them trying to engage, but only driving each other deeper into their solitary grief. These are not warm characters; however, they are extremely compelling. Plan to pick up this book when you have a lot of time . It is the definition of "unputdownable" reading. Ledger is at the top of her game with this novel.

Emily and Simon Bear's mistakes come from their need to do "whatever will help" ease a pain they have kept buried for too long. This is a powerful book about how the damage of the past can appear in ways you never imagined-- but also, ultimately, about the possibility of healing and atonement. I look forward to this author's next book.

Kate Ledger's first novel - ten years in the making - is the story of a family mired in the deepest pain, unable to find their way out. Simon Bear and his wife, Emily, have lost a child a couple of months after birth, and have never properly mourned the child. Soon after they had a daughter who they never properly bonded with.
While the daughter has grown up, the family hasn't so much grown apart as failed to join together. Simon, a noted internist, has time to ameliorate the physical pain of his patients - and pays for that in the end - but can't heal himself or his wife. When he tries to heal his father, that fails, too. Emily has kept her own pain at her first child's death under control but its never eased. She's a successful PR executive - able to figure out how to fix everyone's problems but her own and those of her family.

Ledger's is a very well written novel. Another reviewer gave it two stars, saying it was well written, but depressing. Um, yes, it was depressing, but then so is life sometimes. A good novelist, as Ledger is, can convey the underlying reasons for the sadness that is sometimes in all of us.

This is a must read. Ledger reveals a gripping story of the unwinding of a family through the voices of fascinating and complex characters. It is both tragic and inspiring. I loved it.

In Remedies, Kate Ledger rigorously yet sympathetically explores the way those closest to us unwittingly wound us. There are no visible scars; the damage is much deeper, and thus harder to diagnose and heal.

Ms. Ledger has created the world of Emily and Simon Bear, who live in the deftly described city of Baltimore and its environs. She does not take sides with Emily or Simon as they flail about to retain the comfort and stability of their apparently privileged lives. This novel explores the widening rift in a marriage when grief and guilt fester untreated.

There is much wry social commentary, lightening the tone of the novel. Emily and Simon's outside lives are acutely examined; there are status accoutrements like the noticeably expensive handbag Simon gave Emily. Although she finds it irritatingly impractical, Emily uses it every day, savoring the envy of other women. There are facades to be maintained, no matter the cost.

Avoidance of pain is a central theme. Simon, a genuinely altruistic doctor, becomes consumed in his pursuit of a pharmaceutical panacea for his doting patients. Emily devotes herself to becoming a leader in the dubiously ethical field of public relations, doing damage control for corporations. Both Simon and Emily misread signals from others in their lives, from their daughter to an employee to a lover. Ms. Ledger examines comfortable lives suddenly in upheaval, when the status quo can no longer be maintained. The wisdom and empathy and compassion in this novel, and Ms. Ledger's evocative writing, make reading it a profound and moving experience.