Cover Image: How to Treat People

How to Treat People

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Member Reviews

A memoir of a young nurse in the UK. Molly Case tells stories from her childhood, including her own stay in the hospital for a gastrointestinal surgery, as well as her experiences in training and on the ward. Spare prose and matter-of-fact tone.

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How to Treat People is a memoir that intersperses Case’s experiences as a nurse in London with her own father’s illness. I found Case’s writing lovely - she weaves together Galen, the ancient Egyptians, and modern medicine. She also recounts the stories of different patients, which at time can be tough to read - I was getting stressed thinking about all the things that can go wrong in the human body. I work with nurses at my library, and this book reminded me of what they experience on a daily basis. Recommended.

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Emotional and honest memoir about the intensity of practicing nursing in end of life situations. At times this book is difficult to read, but the authenticity of the author's voice makes for compelling reading. Some of the chapters end without a satisfying resolution, but that is likely how life feels when your profession is to have brief intimate, life and death encounters with strangers.

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Eh. It just doesn't seem like Molly Case's life or insights from her job are interesting enough to justify this book.

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This book was not the best but I still enjoyed it. A young nurse tells about her experiences with medical procedures and patients. My daughter is a young nurse so I enjoyed reading a book that reminded me of my daughter. I liked seeing the nursing field from the young nurse point of view.

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It's pretty unfair to debut author Molly Case that around the same time I read a galley of her memoir, Harvard Magazine profiled Rafael Campo - and in so doing, reminded me how much I adore his work. Case is no Campo. For starters, she isn't a poet. While I admire her effort to bring poetic language to even the most routine medical procedures, I found some of her metaphors a little clunky. But my prevailing impression was that Case is just too young to publish a memoir. I try to give young writers of memoirs the benefit of the doubt, but in this case I couldn't help thinking that another five years on the job - and/or, morbid though it may sound, another few brushes with mortality within her family - would give her more compelling material and a stronger voice.

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