Remember the brain?. Review on Brain - Robin Cook

Background

A University Medical Center

Characters

Martin Philips

In his 40s, he is a divorcee, has a charming demeanour and personality which attracts colleagues and students. A typical workaholic who became so deeply immersed in work that he took his wife for granted. And didnt realise it until she decide to leave him. Now he is lonely and having climbed the corporate ladder to a dead end, he starts to realise that he is not suited to the beaurocracy of management job. Now, his only hope is his research work he is working on with his colleague. Maybe, this book will bring him a nobel prize, he dreams.

Denise Stanger

A resident at the Medical Center, she is in her late 20's and in love with Martin Philips. Her affair with Martin grows with the story line and finally they decide to get married.

Plot

The research work Dr.Martin Philips is working on is a computer application that can read Xrays. In this work, he is assisted by a keen resident in the hospital's Artificial Intelligence Section, who by far seems the only person who can fit into Martin's way of thinking. The pace quickens when a primitive version of the application is presented to Martin, for his trial. Well, the machine can learn itself, when it comes across something extra-ordinary, it has to know it! We know it is not a great thing now, but in 1980's when this novel was written, it was ofcourse, an achievement.

Parallel to this main stream of the story, we are given glimpses of young women students of the university, who after some regular visits to the University's gynaec section, start developing strange symptoms with eyesights, seizures and sexual behaviours. Added to this is the frightening revelation that the brains of corpses have been missing from the Operating Room. Aided with the new tool in hand, both of them set up on their work to put two and two together.

Analysis

As usual, Robin Cook has succeeded in creating the ambience for a high-spirited thriller. His definition of the characters are apt; it just creates the image and the personality he want to portrait in the minds of the reader, without boring you a bit. Sometimes, I wonder at the extent of observation he goes into as revealed by the depiction of some of the characters; take for an instant, the Secretary at the Gynaec Section desk. Her thoughts are rendered so beautifully, and though doesnt carry any weightage on the entire story, is given as importance as any other character in the book.

Well, the plot is similar in execution to most other Robin Cook books. Sometimes I feel that, if you have read one of his works, you have read all. Yet, the approach is different in each case and the details and twists in the story and the ending especially is worth a read.

The ending of the story is really surprising and too close to truth. Though we get mentally prepared for the worst all through the narrative, the climax beats it all. On the flip side, I found the ending a bit too gruesome and banking on the basic instinct.

The author has succeeded to an extent in explaining medical technicality to laymen. And as usual, the core of the novel is ethics in medicine and how it affects the society, by and large.

About the Author

Robin Cook, a surgeon based in Massachusetts, USA. Has written a number of medical thrillers which combine medical science, controversies and down-right games played in the profession.