Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I stayed on the memoir kick a while longer. Gweilo: Memories Of A Hong Kong Childhood by Martin Booth also was a terrific read, although I admit I wondered a little at Booth’s sophistication at the tender age of seven and I didn’t find his mother quite the paragon he did. But Spam Tomorrow by Verily Anderson was a pedestrian home front memoir and I found the author rather irritating. So I think that put an end to memoirs to me for now.
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I ended up going back to the memoir well after all, with
God’s Hotel by Victoria Sweet, an account of her practice at the last almshouse in America, in the years of its transition from patient-oriented to corporate medicine and its removal from its historic building to a purpose-built (but much less patient-friendly, according to the author) facility. I read this on a recommendation, not thinking it was really my thing, and I ended up loving it - the author’s synthesis of people, place, and her own evolving ideas of medicine which in fact went back to the twelfth century marvelously realized the almshouse, even given her biases and touch of arrogance. A five-star read.
I’m now reading a publication from this year,
The Betrayal of the Duchess by Maurice Samuels, about the machinations of the daughter-in-law of the last Bourbon king. The author’s brief is that this was occasioned the transition of France to the modern era, including the nascence of modern anti-Semitism. It’s moving quickly and is entertaining, for all its seriousness of purpose.