Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 1, 1993 TAG: 9308010199
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
By Stewart Massad. Warner Books. $18.95.
The list of physician-authors is long and honored: Anton Chekov, William Carlos Williams, Somerset Maugham, A.J. Cronin, Walker Percy and so on. Stewart Massad bids to join their company.
Physicians by training if not by nature are keen observers of the human scene and are more often privy to moments from which society excludes others. Physicians collect stories, too, winnowed from experience. And, indeed, if there is a time-honored way to teach a general and abiding principle in medicine, it is by illustrative use of a case history. What sets a physician- writer like Stewart Massad apart from his colleagues is the mental discipline to sit down, step back, reflect and record these histories, honing them into stories for us all.
Here is a collection of Massad's work: seven short stories and a novella. It is the first of his writing I have seen. He emphasizes the characters rather than the plot. Those characters and their situations are drawn from everyday medical life but with a sensitivity and sympathy that lifts them out of the humdrum. There is mystical power in every birth and death and crisis among the living. The ones Massad limns here shine with those possibilities. Some of the characters are loveable, others pathetic and most others still somewhere in between; but their portrayer ennobles them all by virtue of his craft. Massad's work bears close watching. He has the potential to be an excellent writer.
- SIDNEY BARRITT
If Wishes Were Horses: The Education of a Veterinarian.
By Loretta Gage, D.V.M., and Nancy Gage. St. Martin's. $19.95.
I liked this memoir much better than I'd expected to. I'm no particular fan of "horse" or "dog" books, but the Gage sisters' book is absolutely a "people" book: about the people who struggle through an almost overwhelmingly rigorous education in order to use their "scientific knowledge and skills for the benefit of society through the protection of animal health" and "the relief of animal suffering" - words from the Veterinarian's Oath.
Loretta enters Colorado State University's College of Veterinary Medicine at age 34 and soon earns the nickname "Mom." She struggles mightily with the work load, with insecurities about her abilities, and with the paradox of killing so many animals in the lab so that she might save others in the field. This dilemma, delivered compassionately with hard-headed wisdom, is the book's greatest strength. Dr. Gage negotiates a truce with herself, but it's an uneasy one; and her honesty is compelling
The book's introduction explains that medical material has been "somewhat oversimplified" in order that the book "be clear and comprehensive to a lay reader." There's still a lot of medical terminology, however. This is not a book for children.
- MONTY S. LEITCH
Goodbye, Vietnam.
By Gloria Whelan. Knopf. $13.
Thirteen-year-old Mai and her family leave Vietnam as many before them have, on a crowded, rotting boat filled with refugees searching for a better life anywhere but in their native land.
This may be fiction, but somewhere out there, a real 13- year-old girl and her family have given their life savings to a shady sea captain and are out on an ocean in an unfit-for-sea vess makes this story so moving. Mai could be the new student in school, a member of the family the church adopted, or the child one sees on television clinging to a raft. "Goodbye Vietnam" could be this morning's headlines or last night's news.
After a week at sea with little food and much sickness, Mai finally reaches Hong Kong, only to discover that her dreamed for "silver city" is actually a prison. She and her family are kept in a warehouse "as large as a rice field" and live on platforms stacked one above the other. At this point, Whelan brings her story to a point where there is no hope for any character. However, as writers will, she does tack on an abrupt, yet happy ending. Perhaps it is her way of letting us know that small miracles can happen even in the darkest of times.
"Goodbye Vietnam" is realism at its best in children's literature.
- LYNN ERWIN
Sidney Barritt is a Roanoke physician.
Monty S. Leitch is a columnist for this newspaper.
Lynn Erwin is a librarian at Hollins College.
by CNB