The Communist's Daughter [Kindle Edition]

Dennis Bock (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this artful blend of fact and fiction, Bock (The Ash Garden) spins a stirring what-if story from the legendary—in Canada and China, at least—life of battlefield surgeon Norman Bethune. The Canadian-born doctor's disdain for "the doomed experiment of capitalism" took him to Spain in 1936 to fight against the Fascists, and to China in 1938 to provide medical succor for Mao Tse-tung's ragtag army struggling against the Japanese. His life story, factually intact but fancifully imagined, is recounted through letters to a daughter Bethune never knew (and, historically, never had) written from China but never dispatched. Bock's vivid first-person narrative exquisitely captures the malice of war: Bethune's bloody WWI experiences, the horror of bombing raids during the Spanish Civil War and the numbing deprivation of Chinese peasants trapped between Mao's revolutionary army, the Japanese invaders and Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists. But the novel's most affecting moments stem from Bock's portrayal of the troubled soul of a war-weary idealist whose dreams of a better world were battered by ugly reality. The sound historical foundation will resonate with Canadian readers; U.S. readers will appreciate the story as powerful and affecting fiction. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* After imaginatively considering the freighted legacy of Hiroshima in The Ash Garden (2001), Canadian writer Bock continues his profound inquiry into the morass of war in a beautifully measured yet deeply felt portrayal of a battlefield surgeon. Bock's narrator is based on a historical figure, the Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, who served in the horrific wars of 1930s Spain and China. When he isn't tending to Mao's starving army, Bethune--destitute, ill, and besotted with death--is diligently writing a philosophical yet jarringly frank memoir for the daughter he has never seen. His musings over bombs, blood, betrayals, and lost love offer little in the way of comfort, providing, instead, trenchant insights into human nature. Reminiscent of Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (2004) in gravitas and lyricism, Bock's novel about a man who means to do good in the world, steadfastly faces death, and reveres the planet's beauty is a study in sorrow, courage, and mystery. As Bock's hero unflinchingly parses our insistence on war and our caring more about ideas than life, he also, even amid horror, celebrates "the rapturous wonder of being alive." Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 258 KB
• Publisher: Knopf (February 13, 2007)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000OI0FO4
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #270,219 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Meditations of a medicine man, March 22, 2007

By 

Stephen A. Haines (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Communist's Daughter (Hardcover)

There's a rising number of novelists using fiction to produce biographies. For some of these, imaginary children prove a useful ploy through which to depict a life. Peter Carey's "True History of the Kelly Gang" is an outstanding example: the notorious bushranger writes a long missive to an unseen daughter in the midst of a siege by policemen. Dennis Bock has followed a similar course, with a similar character. Norman Bethune, who resides among the icons of Canadian history, is given us as a man beset on many sides by a variety of enemies. In this case, it's the Japanese Imperial Army in China, the Fascisti in Spain and scattered personal opponents - and his own father. Bock, using Bethune's "letters" to a daughter he's never seen, applies well-honed skills to animate an idol.

Bethune, of course, is the man best known for inventing the M.A.S.H. unit to rapidly treat the wounded in military engagements. Bringing experience of military field hospitals from the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s, Bethune relocates to China where the Japanese invasion is being resisted by Mao's Communist forces. During his shift of site, he has learned of his daughter, born of his Madrid lover, Kajsa von Rothman. A Swedish anarchist, Kajsa brings light into Bethune's sombre outlook. Bock's portrayal of Bethune's view of her well captures a man's intense sense of real love discovered after a long, sometimes futile quest.

In the letters to his daughter, Bethune imparts his life in brief, but intense sketches. Bock doesn't provide a sequential scenario, but lets Bethune skip about in time and space. In a less skillful writer, this would be distracting and perhaps difficult. As a series of seven missives, listed as "Envelope One" through "Seven", each titled in typescript in the way Bethune might have produced with his dilapidated typewriter, the only focus is how the surgeon might have imparted his life to his daughter. We learn that his Ontario childhood lacked stability. Bethune's parents, particularly his father, were evangelicals, leaving Norman with minimal options. At a young age, however, he learned that the road to Damascus is not a one-way street. Revelation can lead away from divine mysteries and dogmas as readily as attract the unwary to them. For Norman, it was the knowledge that he, and every other human is alone. That isolation can be alleviated only by people who are also aware of that state and take steps to reach out to their fellows. For Bethune, the Communist Party was a means tothat fellowship and medicine a practical manifestation of it.

The medical treatments, particularly in China, dominates much of the text. Not the clinical details, although those are present, but the personalities Bethune can identify and convey them. The Chinese were unused to Westerners, and Bethune's commanding presence often awed them. In his effort to provide care, he's faced with shortages, particularly of blood. With much transfusion experience gained in Spain, the doctor's efforts were baulked by the Chinese fear of taking blood from their bodies. In one instance, needing a particular type, Bethune resorts to having the donor strapped to a bed while the blood is taken. Bethune's complex character is revealed in his respect for the donor's fears, while enraged at the obstinence based on superstition. His rages in China were common, even his assistant Ho being subjected to Bethune's tantrums.

Has Bock depicted his subject in photographic clarity, or invented a modified Bethune for our interest and enjoyment? Only Bethune himself can answer that. What the author has given us is a plausible person of Bethune's outlook and experience. There will be those who grouse about this or that invention or missing element. Those are false grievances. In creating the daughter, Bock must modify the man he's thoroughly researched. Whatever his successes at field medicine or vagaries of temper, Bethune is shown as a real human in his letters to the daughter. The title is purposely misleading as Bethune's "communism" is much less an element in his life than saving lives or opposing Fascist imperialism. In Spain, it is the Fascisti who rebelled against a legally elected Republican government, and in China it is that nation that has been invaded by Japan, not the other way around. While Bock's Bethune may do little preaching about those circumstances, he leaves his "daughter" [and the reader] with no doubt of where the faults lie. This is a book portraying a sensitive man, written by someone who understands how to reveal those feelings. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful indictment of war, September 6, 2008

By 

P. Friel (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Communist's Daughter (Vintage Contemporaries) (Paperback)

The Communist's Daughter is a powerful novel about war, politics, and betrayal during two of the 20th Century's many horrible armed conflicts. Norman Bethune comes through as a deeply flawed, but also heroic, human being. It's a great reminder of what wars do to people.

4.0 out of 5 stars Relative of Dr Norman Bethune, September 5, 2008

By 

Barbara Brown - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Communist's Daughter (Hardcover)

As a great-niece of Dr. Norman Bethune, I found this story to be most interesting. It hasn't convinced me that he is a good man, though it has reinforced his standing as a good doctor in China. [One of his relatives is a bank teller in Canada, who has all the banks' Chinese customers lining up at her cage because of her name.]
His personal life, from what we've found out, stank, but he was innovative.