The last thing a sick person wants from a well person - especially if that well person is a doctor - is perspective... it must be galling for them to sit and hear it from you, with your countless years ahead of you like an endless patchwork of fields stretching out towards the sun.
This Living and Immortal Thing
by Austin Duffy
Genre: Literary Fiction
About: An Irish post-doc is working in a New York City hospital, researching the effects of a drug to cure cancer. Separated from his wife and with no five year plan, his life enters a routine as controlled as his lab work. But then he meets Marya, a Russian translator who becomes a new variable in his life - one he wants to discover as much about as possible.
The Good
The voice in this novel is fantastic. It's first person (I don't think we ever get the main character's name) and the way he sees the world can seem dry and analytical as he makes these very detailed observations about people and places but they read so perfectly. Often it feels like you're reading non-fiction, the level of detail and realism is truly astonishing. You really feel like you understand how his world works and who these people are that he interacts with. Maybe better than he does as sometimes he makes observations but doesn't connect the dots on what this means - leaving the reader to guess the plot twists before he does.
At the same time, inside of all these observations and a lot of heavy science (his research is very well documented to the reader), the prose presents a man with so much hidden emotion. His caring nature, his honesty and his ability to love and love almost without sentimentality, really attaches you to him. You feel like Marya - discovering the serious silent post-doc with hidden depths.
The Bad
The story is very easy to predict and builds slowly. I enjoyed the experience but I could see other people being turned off by the lengthy descriptions of his lab work that, while important to his character, often doesn't move the story along. The footnotes are also very annoying and I found myself giving up and skipping them as they didn't seem to add anything to the narrative.
The Somewhat Iffy
The ending wasn't exactly satisfying. Yes, I did cry so there was definitely a lot of emotion and I'd come to really care about the cast of characters. However, we're not really left with a sense of what these events have done to impact the main character's life. He has plenty of decisions to make and changes are coming his way, but it seems like he presses a reset button at the end.
Overall
A vivid and beautifully told story about life and illness and the randomness of it all. I loved the main character's unique perspective and the meticulous detail given to the mundane.
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