The
Bad Doctor is a graphic novel describing the daily life of Dr. Iwan James,
a general practitioner in a small Welsh town. At the time of the story, Dr.
James is an established, middle-aged physician, with a wife and two grown sons.
Initially it appears that despite his outward success, Dr. James is simply
dissatisfied with his life and career – with his early marriage, with his
overbearing colleague, and with his patients, who come to him with all sorts of
ailments, from silly to tragic to creepy. However, the readers learn that Dr.
James is also struggling mentally with himself. Through flashbacks to his
childhood and his medical school years, and through his clinical interactions
with a patient suffering from obsessive compulsive disorder, it is revealed
that Dr. James has also wrestled with this disorder since childhood. In between
composedly caring for all of his patients, releasing his frustrations on long
bike rides through the Welsh hills, and sharing his concerns with friends, he
learns to understand his compulsions and confront his own sense of inadequacy.
The author, Dr. Ian Williams, has in fact worked
in a rural general practice in Wales. Although this novel is a work of fiction,
and “any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is
purely coincidental” (pg. 2), the story is naturally and richly informed by his
personal experiences.
