Bodies
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The unnamed narrator of Jed Mercurio's Bodiesis a newly qualified house officer in a busy city hospital. He arrives with his ideals intact and a vision of what his career in medicine will be. Within a short time the relentless procession of sick and damaged patients, the long, wearying hours he is obliged to work, the cynicism of his colleagues and the constant presence of death and disease take their toll. His idealism vanishes. He looks the other way when senior doctors are negligent or treat patients with contempt. He suffers guilt when a terrible mistake of his own is routinely covered up. His only escape is an intense sexual relationship with a student nurse. Sex is as clinically described in Bodiesas the indignities that age and accident inflict on the body. Mercurio wants to replace the melodrama of TV hospital series in which square-jawed doctors and glamorous nurses battle heroically against sickness and disease. In order to do so, he spares the reader few of the physical details that accompany illness and the body's disintegration. In pursuit of realism he peppers his text with medical slang and jargon, carefully annotated and explained in footnotes. What he has produced, however, is not realism but an inverted version of the melodrama. Instead of everything finally turning out well, the reader knows that, in this novel, everything will turn out very badly indeed. In place of square-jawed doctors saving the sick, Mercurio gives us drug-popping cynics exchanging the blackest of banter over dying patients. Melodrama it may be but, as the book's narrator seeks redemption by turning whistle-blower on hospital practices, it is very gripping melodrama.--Nick Rennison
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Gritty, realistic and funny."
-"Daily Mail"
"The malignant humour is relentless."
-"Daily Telegraph"
-"Daily Mail"
"The malignant humour is relentless."
-"Daily Telegraph"
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Wow, I could not put this down. As a medical student and a part time healthcare assistant I am aware of two views of the medical profession and found this book to be very accurate in terms of interstaff relationships and attitude. The thoughts and inexperience of the newly qualified doctor are vividly portrayed, although this may scare some medical students (and members of the general public) having experienced working in a hospital myself I feel these should serve only to prepare for what is to come, not to put students off. The book is also very accessable to the general public as all specialised terms are explained and the story is great, enough to maintain interest without full knowledge of every procedure involved.
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The scariest thing about this book is the final sentence on the back-cover blurb: "...(a) disturbingly authentic dispatch from the frontline of hospital life". Jed Mercurio has made a name for himself by tapping into the recognition that hospital soaps used to portray a one-sided, glamorous view of hospital life, and deliberately portraying the other side: medical blunders, cover-ups, callous doctors etc. This does not make his book 'authentic'. Rather, it is equally one-sided - he presents a view that is jaundiced, pessimistic and ulimately hopeless. Just as the soaps cram far more heroism into hospital life than really occurs, so he crams far more lethal negligence and cynicism than really occurs. For most of us in the NHS, the truth lies somewhere between: we have seen (and perhaps made) both disastrous blunders and strokes of life-saving genius, amidst long stretches of routine; we have felt both despair and pride. Dr Mercurio's book may be authentic for him, but I find it hard to imagine he is in a majority.
The medicine itself is not always authentic either. I don't know of any NHS hospital (and I've worked in a few) where the medical SHO prescribes for and extubates patients on ICU. And as for a patient waking up immediately after a twenty-minute cardiac arrest (due to 'massive MI') - well, it could be straight off Holby City. Like a previous reviewer, I found the footnotes excessive. Maybe a non-medical reader would find them valuable, but even he/she would probably have spotted something wrong with Dr Mercurio's definition of the 'mons vaginis'.
On the plus side, Dr Mercurio makes some trenchant points: traditional medical school training is not well-geared to the practicalities of being a junior doctor; and hospitals have not been good at detecting (let alone correcting) weaknesses in the system that allow errors to be made. In these and other matters he has caught something of the Zeitgeist of the current NHS, which gives his book a topical bite. He does also have an ear for a truly poetic turn of phrase (the 'lithium wind' will stick in my memory for some time), and his prose is generally engaging.
The book inevitably invites comparison with 'The House of God', and unfortunately fares badly: it is as if Dr Mercurio has deliberately set out to write an NHS equivalent, and has succeeded so well that it might as well be a clone. It's all there: the worldly-wise role model, the suicidal colleague, the consultant obsessed with post-mortems and dress code, the wisecracks, the desperate sex (which becomes quite tedious eventually), even the semi-redemptive ending. 'Bodies' offers nothing new over its American predecessor, but is equally readable.
In short, to any aspiring doctor, medical student or interested layman, I'd say: read it by all means, but don't take it too seriously.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Anyone who saw "Cardiac Arrest" would have a good idea what to expect. This is incredibly accurate; it encapsulates the entire ethos of hospital life. I can't understand why other reviewers say it isn't true to life - maybe not every hospital all the time - but everything is verifiable, even down to patients being referred to by their condition. It happens! Utterly brilliant. If you don't like it, watch "Casualty" instead. Quick Nurse, the screens!
It's about time that Colin Douglas's books were reissued - along similar lines but lighter.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
its just a bit of fun
It never ceases to amaze me how offended people can be by a work of fiction.
This is rollicking good fun.
Its bleak, dark and unpleasant , but that`s half the fun. Read more
This is rollicking good fun.
Its bleak, dark and unpleasant , but that`s half the fun. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Dr. Michael J. Johnson
Sanctimonious twaddle
Thoroughly mean-spirited and unrealistic in every way. Mercurio clearly hated his time as a junior doctor, and it's probably for the best he bailed out of his profession when he... Read more
Published on 2 Feb 2009 by Roland Deschain
Stimulating reading
I really enjoyed this book. It gives a very sympathetic view of the dilemmas faced by a young doctor and the complexities of his private life. Read more
Published on 2 Feb 2009 by N. Stockford
Potential med students, read this book!!
I'm going to be a med student soon and like to read around the subject albeit in fact or fiction. As soon as i started reading the book i was hooked and couldn't put it down. Read more
Published on 29 July 2008 by Adam Stanton
Brave New World?
With the current crop of television soap operas ranging from the bathetic Holby City to the hyperbolic E.R. Read more
Published on 30 Mar 2006 by A medical student
Bodies
Great book. I loved the series on TV & after having read this book I was searching for a sequel to follow the TV series but there doesn't appear to be 1 yet. Excellent. Read more
Published on 24 Mar 2006 by Nicky Jayson
Big pile of pants
This is one of the worst attempts at medical drama writing I have ever come across. The most noticable insult is the way the whole novel has been plagiarised from The House of God... Read more
Published on 2 Mar 2006 by MarlowDude
Bodies. A most readable read.
I am a nursing sister of thirty years experience. On reading Bodies I felt as if Jed Mercurion had borrowed extracts from my nursing diary!
It was sureal. Read more
It was sureal. Read more
Published on 6 Dec 2005 by patricia young
serious doc
I watched cardiac arrest and thoroughly enjoyed it as I could relate it to some of my own experiences. I was therefore very sadly disappointed with Bodies. Read more
Published on 14 April 2005
A completely brilliant and gripping novel
Bodies is written by an ex-doctor and boy does it show.... Totally gripping from page one - not only is it a really scary insight into a hospital doctor's life, but it's one of... Read more
Published on 16 Aug 2004
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