Welcome to Litsy!

I cried. The research is impeccable and the characters, amazingly flawed and real.

FULL REVIEW: https://abookandateacup.blogspot.com/2017/07/review-lady-of-milkweed-manor.html

I picked this up because Edinburgh! Burke and Hare! But ultimately I was disappointed. To me, the book seeme more like a narrative jumping off point for a school discussion (history of medicine, body snatching, poverty, alcoholism) than a story in its own right. 14 year old Robbie spent most of the book in a self-destructive cycle that rarely touched much on the actual Burke & Hare crimes.

I didn't find myself eager to pick it up again.

If you find other books by Noah Gordon, go for them instead of for this.
The story dragged in parts and during the first 30 % I had problems keeping the doctors apart. Additionally I found it old-fashioned and full of clichés. Maybe a book that didn‘t age well. The German translation was sometimes also horrible.

What made me finish it, was that I considered the routine in a hospital to be told realistically. That was what I was interested in.

“My wife is allergic to penicillin”, he had said, in case she forgot to mention it. He repeated it twice [...]. Later, they discovered that the doctor who took care of her knew almost no English. […] The only word that had come through clearly to him apparently was "penicillin", and dutifully he had given her 400,000 units.
[…] Frances had gone into anaphylactic shock and and died almost immediately. (p. 81)

⬆️⬆️⬆️ What a cheap trick … ⬇️⬇️⬇️

As you might remember, I‘m no big fan of narrow line spacing but I like that quote:

“The streets were old and sad, lined with tenements with broken steps and overflowing dustbins, poor people's neighbourhoods where would be a hospital, where the benches of its ambulance would be occupied every morning by the sick and maimed, who
had fallen into society's self-made traps.‘ (p. 33)

⬆️⬆️⬆️ “Society‘s self-made traps” – sad but so apt.

i'm looking forward to the book because i liked my last Noah Gordon quite a lot, and i also know that this is an older edition, one from from 1999.

But honestly, it‘s a crime against the profession of graphic designers, isn't it❓

“We aren‘t trained to see our patients. We are trained to see pathology. We are taught to forage with scalpels and forceps for an elusive diagnosis buried within obfuscating tissues. . . The true relationship is forged between the doctor and the disease.”

I feel lucky to have such a powerful, readable novel be assigned as part of our reading in medical school. Dr. Awdish uncovers a fatal flaw in medicine and challenges us to be better doctors.

When it comes to Julie Klassen, it‘s hit or miss. She can either write a fantastic, heartwarming (albeit, cheesy and cliché) novel, a complete disaster, or something in the middle. Lady of Milkweed Manor, was I‘m sorry to say a complete and utter disaster. The plot was a mere string of events, with no coherent message or destination. The characters personalities would change every chapter. It felt like a mess of words and ideas. Overall 1/5 stars.

Okay, this dedication is just great.
#SarahWoodbury #WelshHistory #GarethandGwen #TheIrishBride #waystodie #physicians #dedication