pickI 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
1 like
pickI 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
pickThis humorous and relationship-heavy cozy mystery improves my opinion of the subgenre. Read my full review here: https://debbybrauer.org/#an-american-in-scotland
Publication is expected April 4.
#NetGalley #DreamscapeMedia #AnAmericanInScotland
so-soI 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.
so-soIf 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.
bailedWhen 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.
