LitMed: Literature Arts Medicine Database

Sawbones Memorial

Ross, Sinclair

Last Updated: May-31-2023

Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction — Secondary Category: Literature /

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Dr Hunter’s 75th birthday in April 1948 falls forty years to the day after he started practice in the little prairie town of Upward. He is retiring, moving away to the big city of Saskatoon, and the citizens have gathered to say fare-well. They celebrate in the patient lounge of the new hospital soon to open bearing the name of this long-time servant of all Upward’s needs--physical, mental, social. The doctor has donated his late wife’s piano and the board is already planning to sell it for much-needed cash. It tinkles softly, unwelcome songs are awkwardly sung, coffee and sandwiches served, while the crowd of locals chatters away sotto (and not so sotto) voce, with each other and the doc.

Over the course of the evening, forty years of memories unfold: births, couplings, deaths, desires, hostilities, random acts of kindness and of spite. Folks sidle up to the doc to express thanks for his support and wisdom. The pharmacist wishes he had prescribed more pills. The journalists want him to spill secrets for a feature article in the local rag. The minister engages him in a debate over the existence of God and the meaning of life—both of which the medic denies. Gossips watch, whispering to each other about the doctor’s imagined survival and his dead wife whose alleged frigidity justified his supposed numerous infidelities.

Shopkeeper Sarah’s revisits her embarrassed memories of adolescent attraction, that ripened into adult affection and pleasure that the doctor has long treated her son Dunc with almost fatherly care, taking him and the big but isolated Ukrainian boy, Nick, on house calls. Home from overseas with an English war-bride and now running the store, Dunc presides over the evening, trying to smooth conflicting undercurrents. The gossips speak sweetly to the newcomer bride and behind her back predict the marriage will fail.

It emerges that the incoming young medic will be Nick, once mercilessly bullied as a “hunky kid” by a few shiftless bigots still languishing in Upward. They are convinced that he is returning to extract his revenge. The old doctor defends Nick in his final words and urges his patients to help the young successor. He knows that they can briefly come together in a crisis, but he scolds them for their chronic lack of charity to strangers and to each other.

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Your Hearts, Your Scars

Talve-Goodman, Adina

Last Updated: May-25-2023

Field, Steven

Primary Category: Literature / Nonfiction

Genre: Essay

Summary:

This slim volume of essays written by a young woman who had a heart transplant packs a wallop, albeit an understated one. The author, who had a congenital cardiac anomaly that required several surgeries—the first at one day old, another five days later, two more at the ages of two and four years—ultimately developed severe congestive heart failure at sixteen and underwent cardiac transplantation at the age of nineteen (none of this, by the way, is a spoiler; the introduction, written by her sister, lays this out in detail). Eleven years later she developed lymphoma, a side effect of the immunocompromise induced by her anti-rejection medications, and passed away at the age of 32. This book was published posthumously, the essays collated and edited by her sister and her friend and colleague at the literary magazine One Story.

The essays—there are seven of them—deal with life experiences, mostly in the form of encounters with other people, mostly post-transplant. “I Must Have Been that Man,” which won the Bellevue Literary Review’s Non-Fiction Prize, begins with a post-party liaison but centers on the author’s meeting with a man in an upended wheelchair out on the street on a rainy night; “Men Who Love Dying Women and Fishing” speculates about what might attract a man to a woman with a terminal illness; “Your Heart, Your Scars, Zombies” offers a novel take on the idea of a zombie occupying a liminal space between the living and the dead and analogizes that to the situation of the post-transplant patient; “Thank God for the Nights That Go Right” speaks to the serendipity—or Higher Power?—that seems to guide our experiences. They range over the timeline; one recounts a pre-transplant trip with other ill children to San Diego, others come from later in the author’s life. There is no linear temporal progression to the essays; rather, one gets the impression that they are simply being remembered spontaneously. Nonetheless, a clear personal narrative emerges.

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2001: A Space Odyssey

Kubrick, Stanley

Last Updated: May-17-2023

Bonanni, Luke

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

The film is divided into three parts.

Part I: The Dawn of Man The film opens in the late Pliocene, 3 million years ago, as a tribe of pre-human apes struggles for survival in a harsh wildland. They forage for wild plants, run from predators, and are forced to retreat from their watering hole by an opposing tribe. Returning to their shelter, the apes stumble upon a tall, black monolith, which they cautiously touch. The apes then begin using nearby animal bones as weapons, allowing them to hunt for meat and seek violent retribution against their enemy tribe. Celebrating his victory, an ape stands on his hind legs and tosses his bone weapon into the air. With the weapon soaring into the sky, the film abruptly cuts to a satellite orbiting Earth. The year is now 2001, and scientist Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) is traveling via space shuttle to a Moon base that has unearthed a monolith on the lunar surface. As Heywood and his research group gather for a photo in front of the monolith, a shrill, piercing tone fills their radio transmission, and the film cuts to black.

Part II: Jupiter Mission: Eighteen Months Later A team of American scientists aboard the spaceship Discovery One has been sent on a mission to explore Jupiter. The team consists of the pilots, Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood), three scientists in cryo-stasis, and the Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic supercomputer, HAL 9000 (Douglas Rain). HAL runs all onboard operations with mathematical precision but confides in Dave that he is anxious about their mission. HAL predicts that a communication device on the ship’s exterior will fail if it is not urgently repaired. Dave pilots an extravehicular activity (EVA) pod and retrieves the device but finds nothing wrong. HAL maintains that his prediction is correct and suggests the device should be allowed to fail to identify the problem. Mission Control advises that their supercomputer ascertained that HAL has made an error, which HAL denies, stating the only error is human error.

Dave and Frank shut themselves in an EVA pod, outside the range of HAL’s microphones, and decide to shut down HAL if his prediction proves to be untrue. However, HAL’s camera records this surreptitious conversation and he reads the pilots' lips. Frank leaves the Discovery in an EVA pod to reinstall the communication device. HAL hijacks the EVA pod and uses it to remove Frank’s air supply, killing him. Dave sees Frank’s body floating off into space and asks HAL what happened, to which HAL replies he doesn’t know. Dave quickly jumps into another EVA pod, forgetting his helmet. While Dave retrieves Frank’s body outside the Discovery, HAL turns off the life support for the scientists in cryo-hibernation, killing them. HAL then locks the door to the EVA bay, denying Dave entry back onto the Discovery. HAL tells Dave that the plan to deactivate him will compromise the mission.

Dave ejects himself from his EVA pod and manually opens the emergency airlock, miraculously surviving without his helmet. Back aboard the Discovery, Dave disconnects HAL’s circuits, while HAL pleads with Dave to stop. As he ceases to function, HAL reveals that his “mind is going” and that he is “afraid.” Dave is shaken by “killing” HAL. With HAL offline, a recording from Heywood automatically begins playing, revealing that the true purpose of the Jupiter mission is to investigate a signal that the lunar monolith sent to Jupiter.

Part III: Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite Dave, now the lone surviving member of Discovery One, arrives in Jupiter’s orbit. He encounters a massive monolith orbiting the planet. As Dave approaches the monolith in an EVA pod, he enters a tunnel of intense flashing colors. He awakens in a neoclassical apartment. He then experiences a strange aging phenomenon, which ends with him as an old man lying in bed. He sees the monolith at the foot of the bed and reaches for it. The film ends with Dave transformed into a fetus suspended in a ball of light, orbiting Earth.

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Still Alice

Glatzer, Richard; Westmoreland, Wash

Last Updated: May-11-2023

Sharma, Sneha

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

Still Alice is a dramatic film based on a novel by neuroscientist Lisa Genova. It is the story of Alice Howland (played by Julianne Moore), a Columbia University linguistics professor whose life is upended by the diagnosis of early-onset familial Alzheimer’s disease shortly after her 50th birthday. What begins insidiously with difficulty finding a word during an important lecture, and getting lost on a familiar running trail, rapidly progresses to more devastating lapses in memory and cognition that are a stark contrast from Alice’s usual function. On top of this, the family is faced with the reality that Alice’s children are also at risk for this genetic condition.

Scenes of Alice’s life are intermixed with her extensive cognitive evaluation by a neurologist. In the office, we watch her struggle to remember the name and address of an imaginary person within minutes of her neurologist telling her; at home, we observe the way she forgets beloved recipes, and even the people she has met just moments before.

As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly painful to watch the deterioration of Alice’s condition, and the effect it has on her loved ones. We see the raw humanity of her grappling with this in various realms—in a particularly heartbreaking scene, she experiences incontinence for the first time because she can’t find the bathroom in her own home. In a later scene, she forgets her daughter after watching her perform in a play. Throughout the film, she clings desperately to her phone, in which she has listed certain essential questions about her life that she feels, if eventually forgotten, warrant her suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills.

Despite these enormous challenges to both her sense of self and her relationships, Alice’s character is presented with the resilience of so many individuals who suffer from Alzheimer’s disease. In a pivotal scene, Alice speaks at an Alzheimer’s Association conference; despite needing to highlight each sentence as she reads it to remember what she has already said, she is able to share her story authentically as the audience and her family is moved to tears.

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The Pull of the Stars

Donoghue, Emma

Last Updated: May-02-2023

Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

It is Dublin in late autumn 1918, the waning days of World War I, and nurse-midwife Julia Power is suddenly thrust into the task of managing a small ward of heavily pregnant women who have contracted the deadly influenza. Having survived influenza herself, she does not fear infection, but she worries about her lack of experience. She also worries about her shell-shocked brother with whom she shares a home.

Two people appear to help: the intelligent but uneducated young volunteer Bridie Sweeney raised in an institution; and the legendary woman doctor Kathleen Lynn –who quietly reveals her competence and skill, even as authorities are lurking to arrest her.

Over the course of just a few days, they encounter recalcitrant mothers, complicated deliveries, battered wives, stillbirths, and deaths. Influenza adds special dangers to the natural event, but some patients survive their ordeal.

Although Bridie was to help for just one day, she learns quickly and returns. Julia is impressed by her diligence and drawn ever closer to her kindness and earthy wisdom. They pass a night together sharing confidences, and Julia begins to understand the physical and emotional mistreatment that Bridie suffered in the care of nuns. Their embrace awakens in Julia a yearning she had never imagined. But only hours later Bridie falls ill and succumbs rapidly to the deadly infection.

When an unwed mother suddenly dies after giving birth to a deformed child, Julia is horrified that the baby must be placed in an institution. Instead, she takes the baby home to an uncertain future but sparing the child the same horrors that Bridie once suffered.

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Ava

Mysius, Léa

Last Updated: Apr-17-2023

Teagarden, J. Russell

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

The movie opens with an idyllic, bright, summer beach scene at a seaside resort somewhere along the French coastline. The beach teems with waders and sunbathers enjoying the weather and each other. Ava, a thirteen-year-old girl vacationing with her single mother and baby sister, is napping on a rock wall. A large, black dog makes its away along the beach and encounters the sleeping Ava. She awakes, startles, and the dog runs off. She follows the dog to its owner, Juan, who is in the midst of a lover’s spat. The police come and take Juan away—he doesn’t have “papers.” This is not the last time Ava meets both Juan and his dog.

While on this holiday, Ava sees her ophthalmologist who informs her that her eyesight is worsening—she has retinitis pigmentosa, and a form that progresses to blindness more rapidly than other forms. The ophthalmologist tells Ava:

Your field of view will shrink and you’ll lose your night vision before the circle closes. It can happen very young...Soon you won’t see well in low light...at night when a place is poorly lit, say...You’ll lose your sight soon.

Ava is shattered. She wishes that the ophthalmologist was dead: “He ruined our summer,” she says to her mother, who in response pledges, “we’ll have a great summer. We have two weeks. That’s good. They won’t spoil our summer. Screw them.” What happens during these two weeks comprises most of the movie.

Ava sees her prospects for the future vanish as her vision deteriorates. She needs to get as much life in as possible before then, and it begins with the time she has left at the beach. Feeding this urgency is Ava’s concern that the end of civilization could be nearing based on evidence a recreation staff member provided, and the approval her mother gives for engaging in sex: “My first time was very early. I was thirteen like you. I understand you wanting to try. I couldn’t stop you. You’ll do as you want, I know.” With this permission from her mother and feeling “My mother is probably unhappy with a daughter like me,” little pressure is left that could counter Ava’s desire to accelerate the accumulation of life experiences, no matter how risky.

And so Ava is off and running, making her first act stealing Juan’s dog. This eventually brings them together. Juan is older, looking like he’s in his late teens, and he’s on the lamb. She joins him and experiences sex, plunder, violence, and close calls with police. We are left wondering what will happen to Ava; the circle is closing.

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Living

Hermanus, Oliver

Last Updated: Apr-13-2023

Brungardt, Gerard

Primary Category: Performing Arts / Film, TV, Video

Genre: Film

Summary:

Living is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru, itself his homage to Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. The screenplay is by Kazuo Ishiguro, who may be the perfect person for the job - born in Japan, raised in Britain, Nobel laureate in literature. The movie stays faithful to the original (some scenes almost frame for frame) while at the same time providing a more contemporary time, place, and English language (with the run time decreased from 143 to 102 minutes) all combining to provide a greater accessibility for many today.

The protagonist, Mr. Williams (Bill Nighy), is the long-standing director of the bureaucratic Public Works Department in post-WWII London. When given a terminal prognosis he starts asking the big questions of life, quickly finding out that not only does he not know the answers but is struggling to phrase the proper questions.

After a brief time trying to find his answers through a night on the town, Williams befriends a former Public Works employee, a bright and vivacious young lady who, journeying with him, leads him to the threshold of what he is looking for. The film remains loyal to one of Kurosawa's most acclaimed devices when, after his funeral, we are told the rest of Williams' journey to find himself as his co-workers share their memories, piecing together the final few weeks of his life.

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George and Rue

Clarke, George Elliott

Last Updated: Apr-06-2023

Duffin, Jacalyn

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

George and Rufus (Rue) are born one year apart into grinding poverty of a Nova Scotia community, to a violently abusive father and a frightened well-intentioned mother. They have mixed heritage, part Black, part Mi’kmaq. Battered and hungry, they struggle with learning and abandon school after several attempts at grade three.

George is stolid, strives to be good, serves briefly (and badly) in the military, and is happiest doing heavy physical work for farms, gardens, and woodlots. But he can never hold a job for long. He marries Blondola and they start a family in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Rue is more dashing, calculating, and slippery. He has a self-taught talent for piano and cultivates an odd form of jazz. He falls in love twice and loses both times--first to an accidental death and next to his own imprisonment. Arrested for theft, he serves two years in prison and, upon his release, barges into George’s marginal existence, contributing nothing and menacing the precarious but loving home.

When Blondola goes into hospital for the birth of her daughter, the doctor refuses to let her leave until his bill is paid. George needs money desperately. Rue convinces him to use a hammer to stun a white man – any white man—and take his money. Together they settle on targeting a taxi driver, but the man who responds to the call is George’s friend. He cannot go through with it, but Rue clobbers the driver, cajoles George into robbing the dying man and dealing with the evidence.

The brutal murder and shockingly clumsy aftermath of their barely disguised deeds results in their arrest. During the police interrogation, George tries to explain his innocence and blames his brother. They are tried within the racially intolerant British-inherited court system that wrongly flatters itself to have avoided American excesses of racism. They are executed on the gallows, hanging side-by-side.

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All Our Names

Mengestu, Dinaw

Last Updated: Mar-30-2023

Trachtman, Howard

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

All Our Names is a novel built around two overlapping but non-parallel narratives. In one, Isaac, a young man, has recently arrived in the United States from Uganda where he had moved from his rural village to study literature at a university in Kampala. After a few complicated years in Kampala, he appears unannounced in the small town of Laurel in the Midwest with not much more than the shirt on his back. The explanation for his sudden arrival will emerge over time. Helen, a young social worker, is assigned to his case, and despite their cultural dissonance, they fall deeply in love. Their physical and social disparities serve as strong attractive forces, like the opposite poles of a magnet. There are obstacles to their relationship -- their own inherent human weaknesses, the ingrained racism of the Laurel community, and the mystery surrounding the Isaac’s past. They are both smart but lonely people who are uncertain about how open they can be about their relationship, whether they can be seen holding hands while walking the streets or even sharing a cup of coffee in a café.

The second narrative details Isaac’s friendship formed in Africa with a fellow student at the university and their gradual but inevitable involvement in the armed rebellion against the corrupt regime governing their country. There is miscommunication and violence in both narratives. They end with separation of the partners – the social worker and the immigrant and the two African men, one who stays in Africa and meets his tragic end there and the other who comes to America

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Our Missing Hearts

Ng, Celeste

Last Updated: Mar-21-2023

Trachtman, Howard

Primary Category: Literature / Fiction

Genre: Novel

Summary:

Celeste Ng’s Our Missing Hearts is set in the not-too-distant future, in the wake of the Crisis that has ineradicably altered American society. After several years of steadily worsening economic downturn and hardship, there is slowly escalating social unrest. Random political violence erupts across the country. A protester is killed and public opinion is inflamed. In the press and social media, China is blamed for the turmoil. This unleashes a wave of discrimination and persecution of Asian Americans. Emergency laws are passed to restore order and to penalize Asian Americans and their sympathizers for purported anti-American behavior. A punitive program is implemented to remove children from parents who are viewed as enemies, real or potential, to the state.

The story centers on a precocious 12-year-old boy, Bird Gardner. His mother, Margaret Miu, of Chinese ancestry, is a little known poet who wrote a slim volume of poems several years before the social fabric began to fray. Without her knowledge, one of the poems, “Our Missing Hearts”, has been adopted as a literary slogan by an underground anti-government resistance movement She is targeted by anti-Asian extremists and harassed by law enforcement. Rather than have her son “replaced,” the government euphemism for removing children from families deemed disloyal and putting them into foster care, she makes the wrenching decision to abandon him and the husband she loves dearly and goes into hiding for three lonely years. She is haunted by the pain of all the removed children and devises an act of protest. It is modeled on the public works created by current Chinese artists using gunpowder and other unusual materials. Her goal is to increase awareness and hopefully termination of the “replacement” program. Her hope is to trigger mass protest and the return of the removed children to their grieving families. The narrative moves inexorably to an unbearably sad ending.

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