South Eight

An absolutely gorgeously and compassionately written medical ethics thriller told from the point of view of a young veteran of the war in Afghanistan, now a physician. I couldn't put this book down and I haven't stopped thinking about it since I read it. Stunning characterization, such vivid storytelling. The writing of the medical world was so human and emotionally rich, I found myself invested in and mourning a passing character within only a couple of pages. I would watch the hell out of the TV version of this!

The thing I found most engrossing about Larry Atlas' medical novel "South Eight,” more so even than the central conflict that the book poses for its protagonist doctor, was its depiction of a piece of state-of-the-art medical hardware which not only presents to a physician all the relevant details about a patient but also adjusts its presentation of the data according to how fast or how well it detects that the doctor is receiving the data. So comprehensively, indeed, does the medical device track how well the doctor is receiving the data, registering even the appropriateness of the doctor’s treatment of the patient, that it raises a concern for some of the other doctors in the book about its potential for misuse – how it might be used, say, against a doctor in performance reviews or in malpractice actions. But the machine, unsettling as it is, isn’t really the chief concern of the book, which finds the doctor confronting a man from his past who is threatening to blow the whistle on the doctor for something that the doctor did when he was a sniper in Afghanistan unless he signs off on the patient having been sober for six months – something manifestly not the case – so the patient will be eligible for an organ transplant. Somewhat implausible, perhaps, the bind that the doctor finds himself in, just as the doctor having been a sniper struck me as a bit of a stretch, but still the doctor's dilemma is compelling enough to keep a reader turning pages. And along the way there's a nicely executed romance with a nurse which ups the tension in the book for how in her efforts to help the doctor she might be putting herself at legal risk. The writing is also top-notch, especially about medical procedures, even if I occasionally found the amount of detail eye-glazing. No eye-glazing, for me, though, during the parts about that machine, averse as I am even to using those insurance apps that track your driving habits, no matter how much money they might save me.