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SECOND OPINION: A Doctor's Dispatches From The Inner City
 
 

SECOND OPINION: A Doctor's Dispatches From The Inner City [Kindle Edition]

Theodore Dalrymple
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)

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Product Description

No-one has travelled further into the dark and fascinating heart of Britain’s underclass than the brilliant Theodore Dalrymple.

A hospital consultant and prison doctor in the inner city, he is also a writer of world renown. In Second Opinion, he lays bare a secret, brutal world hidden to most of us.

Drug addicts and desperate drunks, battered wives and suicidal burglars, elderly Alzheimer's sufferers and teenage stabbing victims. They all pass through his surgery.

It’s the tragic world of ‘Baby P’ and Shannon Matthews – a place where the merest perceived insult leads to murder, where jealous men beat and strangle their women and where ‘anyone will do anything for ten bags of brown’.

In unflinchingly honest prose, shot through with insight, feeling and bleak humour, Dalrymple exposes the unseen horror of our modern slums as never before.

‘Dalrymple’s clarity of thought, precision of expression and constant, terrible disappointment give his dispatches from the frontline a tone and a quality entirely their own… their rarity makes you sit up and take notice’ – Marcus Berkmann, The Spectator

‘Dalrymple is a modern master’ – Steven Poole, The Guardian

'I promise you'll enjoy his books' - Daniel Hannan, Daily Telegraph

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
30 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is a collection of very short Spectator columns that roughly follows on from where his previous book "If Symptoms Still Persist" left off (which in turn was a follow-on from "If Symptoms Persist"). It is roughly twice as long each of those books and, according to a page inside the book, covers the time period from 1997 to 2009 (the previous books covered the mid-1990s).

The stories mostly come from his time working as a doctor and are witty, darkly funny, and well-written. Since they are short pieces, they don't quite have the cultural depth and longer arcs that his longer essays have, but they are still very enjoyable to read. But, it is clearly of a different character than his collections of longer essays like "Not With A Bang But A Whimper" and "Our Culture: What's Left Of It".

Sadly, they don't have the accompanying illustrations by Nick Newman that the other two books had. But, this is only a minor shortcoming because the writing is at the very least equally as good.
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18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
At the end of the day I look forward to sitting in my armchair with my feet up on the ottoman, pouring myself a stiff Diet Pepsi, and inhaling several pages of Dalrymple at his driest. Second Opinion, imported from England, is chock-full of amusing tales of life among the savages. I know what you'll say - Dalrymple lacks compassion! And that's what makes him so delectable, so - so transgressive! In this era where we censor ourselves before thinking, Dalrymple dares to announce what we know is true but dare not say publicly or privately. His experience working in British prisons has given him a wealth of anecdote, but his genius is in the telling. Briticisms abound. I constantly flew to the Oxford English Dictionary to translate his language to American. (I learned that supererogatory does not mean unnecessary, as I had believed, but excess. That "instantiation" is not related to "instantaneous".) There were many phrases that were so Brit that I have no idea what they mean. Nonetheless, I got the gist and enjoyed the process. Second Opinion is superbly amusing and goes down painlessly, especially taken with a double dose of Schadenfreude. I want to add that the book contains unexpected grace notes of wisdom, observations about finding meaning in life, as well as the sudden leap of empathy toward the rare patient who embodies a quiet heroism. His encounter with the young man who speaks of Othello with recognition and applies it to his own jealousy is poignant.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Read in small doses 10 Feb 2011
By Damaskcat TOP 50 REVIEWER VINE™ VOICE
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
The book is a collection of short essays about the author's experience as an inner city and prison doctor. I found them interesting though they are better read a few at a time. The book paints an almost completely hopeless picture of life at the bottom of the heap. Men and women beat each other up because of real or perceived insults or injuries. They all, without exception, appear to lack the finer qualities of human nature.

Prisoners vow to go straight but never really achieve their aim. People try and commit suicide because someone is nasty to them. Men walk out on their children and women have children by many different fathers. Yes he is judging people by his own standards which some people may find distasteful but occasionally a small dose of judging other people and finding them wanting makes a refreshing change in this non-judgemental era.

I finished the book feeling there is no hope for the majority of inner city dwellers but then I thought about the flashes of humour and the occasional insights displayed by some of the author's patients. The author offers no solutions to the many problems he encounters and to my mind throwing money at the situation would not help. The book made me realise that we actually need to censure people if they commit crimes and we are doing them no favours if we explain and excuse their behaviour. Everyone needs to develop a sense of personal responsibility. Life at the bottom is tough but it need not be as tough as some people make it.
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