Letter to a Young Female Physician

Letter to a Young Female Physician: Notes from a Medical Life by Suzanne Koven is an interesting, well written memoir about Koven's own personal experiences as a doctor but it is more than that.  It is a book that we can all relate to.  She talks about something called "imposter syndrome" which in her case meant that she was insecure about being a doctor; she did not feel she was competent enough to be a "real" doctor.  Many people struggle with this, feeling they are not good enough or smart enough to be whatever it is that they want to be or to do whatever it is they want to do and this book gives voice to that.  Koven pulls back the curtain on what it is like to be a doctor while also juggling the roles of mother and daughter.  She takes us from her residency during the AIDS crisis to being a doctor during COVID-19 and everything in between.  The book is disturbing at times, but it is also funny and compassionate and full of life.  I highly recommend it.  Thank you to NetGalley, the author, and the publisher for providing me with a digital copy of this book prior to publication in exchange for my review.  This review is being posted immediately to my GoodReads account and will be posted on Amazon and Barnes and Noble upon the book's publication.

This is a poignant and incisive memoir of a woman doctor whose message is for all women with careers, families and other obligations. She is authentic and so can we all be, in our own ways, in this imperfect world. Humor helps too!

Letter to a Young Female Physician is a compelling, beautifully written memoir. It could also be titled Letter to a Young Female as author Suzanne Koven describes universal situations faced by women. She deals with insecurity about her appearance and her weight, has conflicts with her mother and husband, and has to balance her children and her career as a physician. However, this is not a “how to” book. It’s a brutally honest look at a woman’s life.

Her parents were successful professionals, her father an orthopedic surgeon and her mother a lawyer although she was a stay-at-home mother during Suzanne’s childhood. She observed that her father “wore the pants and made the money. I wanted that.” She married in med school and had three children, all the while coping with the strenuous demands of her career in internal medicine. Koven describes the feeling of not being good enough, the “imposter syndrome”, but also a deep set reaction to her troubled relationship with her mother. Koven has had a life long battle with weight, as did her parents. She tries every diet, nothing works, so she finally consults a psychologist and confides that when she overeats, she has argues with herself. The therapist asks her whom she is really arguing with and she realizes it is her mother.

There are many moments like this in Letter to a Young Female Physician. There is also a description of racism in hospitals with a startling look at the way doctors reacted to it. This is a powerful book, sometimes difficult to read because Koven is so emotional and vulnerable. 5 stars.

Thank you to NetGalley, W. W. Norton & Company and Suzanne Koven for this ARC.

I am not a doctor, nor am I even American, but so much in this book connected with me - and I would recommend it to anyone.

As you might expect from the "Letter" in the title, the book isn't anything like a chronological narrative; more a series of essays, many of which have interconnecting themes. Koven is an absolutely superb writer, her prose meditative and careful, reminiscent of the tone of Natalie Goldberg. There were so many lines I wanted to earmark and remember forever. 

It is always fascinating to peer backstage into medical school, training, and hospital life. There was much less focus on "problems with the body" in this book compared to many other I've read by medical writers (Do No Harm, Fragile Lives, Adventures in Human Being, etc.), although there was enough of it to keep my medical/scientific curiosity satisfied. Koven, however, focuses much more on the people behind the illnesses, and what it means to relate to other people as a human and a doctor. The most prevalent theme is that of her own family, and the ends of her parents' lives, which she writes about with frankness and beauty. So often I thought while reading, "yes, that is exactly it". 

I hope I will remember all the lessons that Koven imparted in this book, and that there are more books to come.

(With thanks to W. W. Norton & Company and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)

My daughter is currently studying medicine so I was interested to read this book from a female doctors point of view. I really enjoyed her perspective on all the ups and downs of life as a practicing doctor whilst holding down a family and the way in which her loyalties were so divided between caring for her family versus caring for her patients. A must read for anyone considering entering the profession.

This was a very thoughtful examination of the events and pressures in a female doctor's life as she progressed through medical school, residency and family and career, and how the rest of her life with her parents, husband and children intersected with her career as a doctor.  It was well written and an enjoyable read.  
Thanks to NetGalley for this advance review copy.