Book lover. Stephen King Fanatic. Will try anything once. General Lover of Fiction. Reviewer Everywhere. All views my own. Mostly.
When a medical mistake goes horribly wrong and Ralph Meier, a famous actor, winds up dead, Dr. Marc Schlosser is forced to conceal the error from his patients and family. After all, reputation is everything in this business. But the weight of carrying such a secret lies heavily on his mind, and he can’t keep hiding from the truth…or the Board of Medical Examiners.
Now I’m amongst those who has yet to experience “The Dinner” but from what I have been told its a book worth reading – before that however, I came across this by the same author and thought, heck lets see shall we? The honest truth is I had mixed emotions about this novel…
From the start it drew me in – the writing is sublime that much is for sure. I did find the main character, Dr Schlosser, extremely unlikeable and yet somehow kind of endearing..and as the story went on, without giving anything away, it was utterly engrossing and in places unexpected. There is a kind of wry irony to his meanderings on being a Dr, being a father, being a husband and life generally speaking, that draws you into his world in a wonderful way. And yet somewhere in there I grew slightly weary of his attitude and his rather unfocussed and seemingly irrelevant exposition on certain things…admittedly I skim read several portions of the middle of the story for this reason.
However as things progressed and more of the full story emerged I was absolutely compelled to read to the end, and things certainly picked up again towards the end as we finally get to the point. The ending itself I think will garner mixed opinions – for me I thought it was just right, in keeping with the rest of the tale.
Overall I would say I enjoyed it without loving it entirely. Certainly it has not put me off reading “The Dinner” or indeed reading further novels from Mr Koch. Because it is brilliantly written, had something that did hold me there, I think mostly it was just that the magic didnt happen with this particular saga.
Happy Reading Folks!