15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterpiece, May 6, 2009
This review is from: Right of Thirst: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)
Right of Thirst is a masterpiece. It has the two essential attributes of any great novel: it is exquisitely written and it deals with profoundly universal themes. The book is also extremely timely, in that it deals with a region of the world very much in today's news, the vague border regions of Pakistan, never actually named in the novel, in which Americans have inserted themselves in response to the disquieting geo-political forces that buffet our country and the world.
How does one do "good" in one's life, how do we make a difference if we see our lives wanting, are universal questions for us all, and ones that serious novels ask and attempt to answer. How does America, or more specifically, Americans, do "good" in far away, vaguely sinister and foreboding and dangerous parts of the world is also such a question. Frank Huyler confronts these issues with stupendous literary talent and the sensibility of an intensely caring and proficient medical doctor. The results, which have sometimes been compared to the works of another doctor/writer, Anton Chekhov, are extraordinary. This is a book that simply demands to be read by a wide audience. The blurbs on its cover are not smoke: extremely talented and well-known fellow writers are deeply impressed by Huyler's work, and all of them appear to feel that this is a book for our times and beyond that simply must find a way to break free of the commercial forces that tend to limit the success of quality in the American market place.
If you value unusually beautiful prose, insight into both the smallest details of life, how the collar on a poor hotel employee in a posh large hotel fits, to larger details, what the tendons of an amputated leg look like, what it feels like to be under fire, to even larger themes like aging, and love, and the feeling s of failure, and how to try to make a difference---- and if you would want each one of these registers to be described absolutely perfectly in prose that makes you stop on each page and savor some special moment, somewhat as in Fitzgerald, then you simply must read this book and pass it on to friends whom you value. It is that good.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating Insight, April 22, 2009
This review is from: Right of Thirst: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)
Empty following the slow death of his wife and on sabbatical to put his life back together, cardiologist Charles Anderson finds himself volunteering as the doctor on site at a refugee camp on the other side of the globe. But when the refugees never arrive and tensions rise to dangerous proportions with a bordering country, he finds that even his altruistic intentions don't follow their planned course.
This is one of those books that will stay with you long after you read the last page. The depth of character is such that I still find myself wondering what is going on in their lives before I remember they only exist on paper. Even beyond the basic plot, there are statements and insights commenting on the human condition that will stun you in both their simplicity and depth. I find myself recounting some of these things, unable to put into words what was so eloquently written and, giving up, telling the listener, "Never mind. Just read the book. You'll know what I mean."
This is a haunting story of a man trying to escape himself when all that he has done to make himself seems so pointless. It is a story of husbands and fathers, servants and masters, stature and status. It is achingly beautiful and horrifyingly ugly. And shows just what man will do for his family. He paints a fascinating picture of cultural differences through the eyes of his American doctor in the unnamed Islamic country. The struggle. The pride. Striving. Family. And how, even though we are so very different, in the end, we are much the same.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A serious novel about serious matters; very much worth your time, May 4, 2009
This review is from: Right of Thirst: A Novel (P.S.) (Paperback)
I read the publishers' catalogues and sometimes even their novels, and I have the same reaction over and over: Who are these books for? They surely don't touch me. Family dramas, love stories, thrillers, quests --- somebody must care about them. To me, they take place in fictionland, a world far from the one we're living in.
I'm not saying that novels should be as timely as a Twitter bleat. I'm just dazzled by how religiously novelists ignore the issues we actually think about, the issues that obsess us and keep us up at night. Because it's not like what's happening is a secret. Any writer could have felt the tectonic plates moving these last few years and wonder --- just f'instance --- how your life "matters" when you control so little of it. Or what happens to love when the money goes. Or how a resourceful woman deals with the loss of her access to credit cards, or how a poor person holds on to her values, or what you do to keep your spirits up when the only thing that gets you to your job in the morning is that company-paid health plan.
None of these subjects shows up in the novels that come my way, so I was unnaturally pleased to encounter 'Right of Thirst', which addresses a question that I, for one, think about all the time: Can one person make a difference? Here, that person is Charles Anderson, a cardiologist. In his hospital, his town, his field, he's a somebody, but as the book begins, he feels like a cipher. And rightly so. His wife had a vague pain in her abdomen --- for a year! --- and he dismissed her, thinking she was "imagining things" Now she's freshly in her grave, and he can see, with the clarity of mourning, what a second-rate husband he'd been --- for three decades, he'd given his love to his career and left his wife to raise their son and paint her little portraits.
Meaning! He thirsts for it. And, right on cue, opportunity knocks --- there's been an earthquake in the Middle East, and he can do great work at a refugee camp set up on a remote mountain. No sooner can you say sabbatical than he's off.
Of course, nothing is as promised. The refugees are nowhere to be seen. Romantic temptation is quite present, however, in the personage of Elise, a too-attractive-to-ignore German who's studying the DNA of a mountain tribe. Charles makes a small medical miracle by amputating the leg of a girl who'd die without the operation, but he's disillusioned: "I'd come all this way for an empty tent city and a one-legged girl. A wind-scoured field of stones on the other side of the earth...My plunge into the unknown, my step into this other world, where I hoped to lose myself in an abundance of need -- and so few of my hopes had come true."
But he doesn't get to mope for long. Fighting breaks out. And the book becomes a kind of survival epic, as the American's illusions are stripped from him.
The author is an emergency physician. His medical writing has the feel of authenticity, and his diagnosis of human emotions is sure. He's much traveled in the Middle East, which partly explains the title --- the Prophet Muhammad laid out the rights of the thirsty for the precious resource, water.
I'll spare you the ironic meaning of the title, and my wish that 355 pages were 300, or my slight suspicion that Hemingway is one of Frank Huyler's literary influences. Focus on this: "Right of Thirst" is a serious novel about serious matters. It's not a waste of your time.
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