The Book Report

The Book report 11

By A. Bae Hel

I’m back after a trip across the mountains to see the family. Many of the best books I have read came from recommendations on that side of the mountain.  I am suffering a bit of Dungeon Crawler withdrawal after having finished the current published books, (a recommendation from my grandson), so I have been reading (aka listening) to the books as I drove. The story lines are so complex, that I felt I needed to listen again to catch more nuances.  It was worth the time

But on to new offerings.

The Borrowed Life of Fredrick Fife

By Anna Johnston

I had to stop.
The premise is good; elderly man, about to become homeless, discovers another elderly man deceased in wheelchair at the park. As he tries to bring the body to the carers, he slips and the body tumbles into the river. He hits his head when he falls and when he comes to, the carers have mistaken him for their patient, calling him by the dead man’s name and bundling him into the van back to the nursing home. Mistaken identity continues as he looks much like the deceased, and deceased had dementia. so…
See, good premise.
But, and I didn’t get far, but filled with juvenile humor based on farts, penis and who knows what else? It is like being trapped in a car on a long road trip with a bunch of 8 year old boys.

Life is too short to read about intestinal gas as a story plot.  

The Women

By Kristin Hannah

This book is all over the book lists with much raves.  I have read some of her other books like The Four Winds and The Nightengale and found them a good read.  I was optimistic that this would also be well researched and a worthy read. But, Ugg. 

I rarely don’t finish a book so I persevered hoping to find something of value, but when you write an unlikable character you really need to have a dynamite story line. Sadly, just an unlikable character and a false promise of the story of the nurses of Viet Nam.

Full disclosure, I have never been in a war, nor am I American, but I have been a nurse in acute care for over 40 years, including America. I know nursing, which is why I was so looking forward to this story, and perhaps my disappointment of that story in why it gets a 2 star.

Frankie is a privileged naïve childlike woman in the 1960s who goes to Viet Nam in a misguided attempt to make her parents proud, or something. And it is likely that the experience of nurses in Viet Nam is as describe, but the experience of nurses in the world back home, which is where the majority of this book takes place is simply written to manipulate and try to build Frankie into a martyr character.

She is an OR nurse, and I do believe OR nurses in Viet Nam DID perform tasks outside of their scope back home, ABSOLUTELY, but where was the head nurse in Viet Nam? It is simply Frankie going rogue, Frankie being schooled by physicians, Frankie getting burned out and no leave because the unit needs her, only her to save them all.  And granted, nurses in acute care do sacrifice themselves all the time for the good of the unit.

And once she is back home, she is a nurse who thinks bedside nursing is beneath her because a chop shop in Viet Nam led her to believe she was hot shit. Once she is finally back in the OR the narrative is so unbelievable. GSW do not come bursting into the OR. Clothes are not cut off in OR – can you imagine the horror of contaminating the OR like it is a battle field casualty station? Why are the GSW pumping blood, does EMS in the US not know about pressure on wounds? Is there no ER trauma bay? And gun shot wounds to the chest do not need and emergency tracheostomy, they need a chest tube. Why is an OR nurse wandering around the hospital into random patients’ rooms to hold their hands as they die? Nor does any hiring director or manager care one bit about your marks in nursing school, nor do they prevent you from working to your scope. Even in the 1960s and 1970s.

Granted Frankie is a walking disaster, but the stories of her escapades seem like they are written to show how dedicated she is to nursing, and how caring and compassionate, but all I read was a savior nurse misguided by her own sense how she was needed.

Now I get the PTSD was and is a very real tragedy, and lives are ruined. I have no quibble with that aspect of the story, but surely the entire US public wasn’t ignorant to nurses going to war? Given they have been doing it since the inception of nursing. Maybe I give the American public too much credit…

Then there is the stringing together of snipts of things from the 1970s, lists of music, casual references to events, and dear lord the description of the clothes people decided to wear at every occasion. – it all seems so calculated to nostalgia manipulation. It goes on and on and on. I kept thinking it was over, but no, new bad decisions and catastrophes. Lists and lists are not plot development.

I can’t recommend you put any time into this, I am sorry, I have. Nursing is full of trauma, and resiliency. Frankie never made me feel any compassion for her and Florence is rolling over in her grave.