NZ novelist Carl Shuker is a former editor of the British Medical Journal. He knows his medical procedures and the opening pages of this novel graphically illustrate the drama, the tension and intimacy of an operating theatre. This is the story of highly respected, hard working, well and truly smashed the glass ceiling surgeon Elizabeth Taylor aka Loco Liz. During an operation on a young woman, a mistake is made, which may or may not have lead to her death some hours later in ICU. In the world however we live in, where blame must always be apportioned, Liz finds herself the target of the cause of the patient's death. At times she is intensely unlikeable, which also raises the question of would we have liked her the same or more if she was a top male surgeon? I doubt you can be 100% nicely-nice to get where Liz has got in her profession, having sacrificed a future of relationships and children along the way, again unlike many of her male co-surgeons. Incredibly competent and confident, she finds herself beginning to unravel as the shock that she may be held accountable for the death begins to hit her. In the world of the operating theatre where there is so much mechanisation and reliance on technology, the scalpel is still held by a human being, and whether this is the cause of death or not, the human error is the natural scapegoat. Threaded through the novel is the real life disaster of the 1986 Challenger explosion, which in the end was due to the tiniest of human errors. I felt this thread was probably not necessary, it didn't really add to Liz's story, and I found it took away from urgency and immediacy of what was going on in Liz's life. A great read, important too in this society of ours where we are constantly looking for others/anyone to be made accountable for things that go wrong.
No comments:
Post a Comment