All good things come to an end...... Review on Doctors - Erich Segal

“Reviews on books are very tricky, hence didn’t write one till now myself ….” Ranjran, Mouthshut member

'Gentlemen, I urge you to engrave this on the template of your memories: there are thousands of diseases in this world, but Medical Science only has an empirical cure for twenty six of them. The rest is...guesswork.' Erich Segal in Doctors

The Main Cast:

Laura Castellano:

The beautiful lady of Spanish origins, who as she grows up realizes that beauty, too can be harmful as it is perceived that beautiful people are often dumb. A doctor specializing in neo-natal problems, Laura battles with a lot of internal contradictions underneath her “I have a measure of you'' confident looks. What hurts her most in life is the fact that her parents while reacting in diametrically opposite ways to her sister’s death at an young age, ended up making her feel insecure. Also the fact that she is unable to find a real soul mate in spite of all her good looks and great brains.

Barney Livingston:

The perfect antidote for Laura, Barney is a childhood friend infact “the first boy to see Laura naked… as Erich puts it”. A psychologist by profession Barn took up medicine because he was inspired by Laura’s father and also because he was once shocked by how callous a doctor was. Beneath his cool and calm exterior Barn too has a few light tremors but most often he is in control of himself and his emotions. At one stage in his life, he had to give up pro basketball after his father’s untimely death and the responsibility to support his mother and younger brother looms large on him.

Bennett Landsman:

The only black student in the Harvard’s 1962 batch. Landsman has another handicap to haunt him; he was raised by Jewish parents who were freed from a Nazi concentration camp (by Landsman’s father who dies soon after that). He is not accepted by the blacks or by the Jews and not the least by majority of the whites. He is a fighter. His first passion was surgery and he was good at that too, until a freak incident renders him unfit for surgery, with Barn’s (who is his only friend) motivation, Landsman goes on to study Law and…….

Seth Lazarus:

The genius of the class. But Seth also has a side in him that not many of the others know. He is very compassionate. So much so that he advocates euthanasia, what starts off as an emotional decision to relieve is elder brother of unending pain, almost becomes a way of life for this extremely controversial character of the book.

Hank Dwyer:

The “would-have-been” priest. He is the character that almost turns on its head as the novel progresses. From a character that is almost innocent to the one that indulges in almost all known vices to man Hank represents the average human being with a lot of good intention but greater fallibilities.

Peter Wyman:

He forms a very small part in the novel, but the one last sentence that he utters really lingers in your mind long after you have finished reading the book. He is an utterly ambitious,” I-get-what-I want” type, who is hated by almost everyone in the book except a professor. Strange are the ways of Wyman that even this professor, cannot come in between him and his philosophies.

Grete Anderson:

She is there just to add salt and pepper to the novel, almost everyone including the reader is fantasizing about her. But she has a problem and that is……

The Plot:

The book starts of tracing the childhood of Laura and Barney, taking us through the bitter sweet times in which they grow up. They both want to be Doctors for different reasons. They both end up in the Harvard Med School, beating all odds. Their life in the Med School, from the first day at the autopsy lab where they have to dissect a corpse, to injecting an orange, from drawing blood samples from each other, to operating upon dogs is vividly brought to life by the author.

They make friends and enemies too. Laura falls in love and is all but Married to her fiancée ( whom she ends up marrying eventually) and Barn falls in love every other day, the problem is that its with a different girl every time. All this while, their friendship keeps getting stronger and stronger. They realize how important they are to each other. After graduation their practice takes them away from each other. Both earn a lot of respect and admiration in their respective fields. Laura’s dedication to work draws her away from her husband, while Barn’s closeness to Laura results in a state that no woman (no matter how much ever they love him) is ready to be his wife.

Late in their life (close to being in their 40’s) they realize that they were not meant to just friends but they were meant to be man and wife. They do just that and soon they are blessed with a sweet boy (the last they can have as Laura has some complications). But their joy is short-lived as the most important life in their life is about to be taken away from them by a disease that’s rare and has no known cure….. Can their medical expertise save their child, can their love for him save him, can their influential friends and batch mates who have made a name (in good or bad way) come to their sons rescue, can God be anymore cruel to them….. ?? Well that’s for Segal to narrate and you to find out.

The Narration:

The book is written is simple English, there are of course a few medical jargons thrown around which cannot be avoided with a plot like this. Even that does not come in the way of the lucid style in which the book is written. Segal is extremely witty and comes up with some sensational stuff almost page after page. His ability to blend events in history into the book is remarkable. His quotes and statistics show the amount of research that has gone into the making of this book. Very rarely does he sound judgmental, where ever there are debates of ethics and morals; he just leads us to make our own conclusions. To put in one word this book is “brilliant”. I must also mention here that a couple pf my friends don’t rate this book as Segal’s best. I haven’t read all of his books so I can’t comment on that.

What I felt:

Somewhere during my growing years one of my ambitions was to be a doctor. I had thought once I am a doctor, I will lead a comfortable life. A doctor to me was an all powerful person who knew everything and had everything under control.

The book bares open the human side of doctors, their joys sorrows, triumphs, failures and constantly reminds you of the amount of stress the “healing” profession puts on its practitioners. It tells you why doctors and med students top the list when it comes to suicide, alcohol and drug abuse and divorce rates.

In its own way Doctors is also a Love Story, exploring the essence of love and the fact that true love will survive even without acknowledgement. Also in its own way the book is about the struggle against racial discrimination and suppression of humans on the basis of their origin. The book also touches upon very debatable issues like “mercy killing” and the not so debatable ones like “effects of smoking”.

The book has simply changed the way I look at doctors…and of course at the world around me.