Review (PDF) The House Of God
By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and utterly human, The House of God is a mesmerizing and provocative novel about Roy Basch and five of his fellow interns at the most renowned teaching hospital in the country. Struggling with grueling hours and sudden life-and-death responsibilities, Basch and his colleagues, under the leadership of their rule-breaking senior resident known only as the Fat Man, must learn not only how to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings. A phenomenon ever since it was published, The House of God was the first unvarnished, unglorified, and uncensored portrait of what training to become a doctor is truly like, in all its terror, exhaustion and black comedy. With more than two million copies sold worldwide, it has been hailed as one of the most important medical novels ever written.With an introduction by John Updike
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Berkley; Reissue edition (September 7, 2010)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0425238091
ISBN-13: 978-0425238097
Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (506 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #6,194 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #4 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Humor > Doctors & Medicine #10 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Humor & Satire > Dark Humor #19 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Medical
There are all kinds of things I hate about this book. I hate remembering how long I would go without sleep and the psychic torture that an internship inflicts on you. I hated the depersonalization of patients. I hated the sexual escapades. Most of all, I hated having in print the real feelings of an intern who has been up for three days - praying on the way to the ER that that Nursing Home Gomer with 20 fatal diagnoses would have the decency to croak before you got there so you could get an extra five minutes of sleep or a stale doughnut before the cafeteria closed again.Shem portrays masterfully the jumble of emotions of a typical intern. There is a superficial level of glossy brown-nosing that got you into med school in the first place. Buzz words like compassion, continuity of care and empathy are used with the teaching physicians and in meetings. Then there is a deeper level of survival where you would kill your mother for 5 minutes of sleep or being able to crap without the code blue pager going off. This level is usually not discussed or written about in many of the typical intern coming-of-age books out there. Not because it isn't true, but because it's uncomfortable and offensive to non-physicians. Shem is the master of this level of medical thinking. No one else even comes close. Shem approaches but doesn't quite get to an even more primal level - that of duty. This level is what keeps an intern from punching his residency directors or the arrogant surgeon who asks him "What is the difference between a sh*thead and a brown-noser" and then tells you the answer is depth perception.(True story) It's what makes you do your best when you know the patient is hopeless or even abusive as you try your best to save them from themselves or some disease.
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