Westons novel of a British abortionist under review after a mother nearly bled to death isnt a surprising read.
The hospital panel eventually finds Nancy Mullion fit to be a doctor, Since the hospital allows her to continue to be an abortionist, the plot has a sad ending,
Mullions language shows that she is a typical abortionist, She has no religious foundation, views abortion as just something that any doctor should do in the course of his or her duties, and is antagonistic towards prolifers, even venturing the ad hoministic opinion that all “civilized” people are antilife.
The passage where she offers “some kind of reverence” to the aborted child by making sure all of his or her body parts have been gathered after the abortion is ridiculous, yet credible, now that David Daleidens investigative journalism shows that the abortion business Planned Parenthood does just that when it sells aborted baby body parts.
Also, like a typical abortionist, Nancy does not see the unborn child as her patient equal to the mother.
These characteristics are typical of abortionists,
One wellwritten passage of process analysis writing occurs when Weston shows how her narrator slid to becoming a mere abortionist instead of a doctor.
Overall, this is a standard narrative of an abortionist undergoing, as the book says, “perpetrationinduced traumatic stress”, a category of PTSD assigned to those who kill.
Since abortionists are killers, its no wonder that the narrator is tortured in herpage attempt to resolve her trauma.
Unfortunately, Nancy Mullions perpetrationinduced traumatic stress will endure as long as she continues killing the dirty work of killing the unborn.
I had high hopes in the beginning of this book, Some of the writing was sooooo lovely in the first few chapters, there were many lines that I reread just to admire Weston's voice.
I also thought the topic would be really interesting, I've worked in a perinatal unit and thought there was so much potential in the topic, But I just couldn't connect with the main character, Nancy, I felt like her reflections on her past were supposed to give me perspective into her but some how it all felt very disjointed and disconnected to me.
I tired of Nancy realizing that she's tuned out and missed half of what another character said to her or rehearsing what she was going to say and
then saying none of it I get that this was supposed to show how bewildered she felt by her own failure, how devastated she was by the fallout, but it just didn't work for me.
At the end I just felt like I had wanted something more from Nancy, I read this novel in two days, That is to say, it is a gripping and fast read, but not an easy one, In fact, in parts, it is deeply terrifying, It is a powerful and brave narrative, with a protagonist so seemingly absent and daydreamy at times, yet actually very thoughtful and complex.
I liked Nancy the protagonist, then I really disliked her, and then I liked and sympathized with her again.
I applaud Weston for taking on such a difficult and political topic abortions and women's right to have a choice, and making it so deeply felt and personal.
My initial interest in Gabriel Weston's debut fiction was prompted by an article I read about her memoir I liked that she pushed the envelope and will admit that surgeons are not infallible.
They are human, they make mistakes, I know that Direct Red: A Surgeon's Story, , a collection of twelves stories about her work in surgery, this still predominant male world and the patients she treats, will be read by me one day.
In the meantime I picked up her debut novel Dirty Work to see what she's got,
Dirty Work is the story of Dr, Nancy Mullion, an obstetrician gynecology surgeon,
Nancy's specialty is abortion, She practically does these in her sleep until one day when something horrible goes wrong, The patient on her table is bleeding out and rather than being able to stop it, Nancy freezes, necessitating an emergency call to Nancy's supervisor who must take over in an effort to save the patient.
Nancy is brought up before a review board, This method is used to give us the past, the present and possibly the future of who Nancy is.
Early on Nancy explains to us that surgeons pick an organ to look after,
"We gynecologists have the womb to look after, And whichever specialty we choose, each of us has to do something ruthless to keep our patient safe: We have to forget about the human significance of the organ we're operating on.
"
In a flashback she describes when she became herself:
There is a point in each of our lives when it seems that the real story begins, when we become the self that all our ensuing life somehow trails out from This may just be the time, around three or four, when memory begins.
But my birth, in this sense, occurred during one flowing American fall, This is when I became myself, The girl before this time is a shadow like a soul who is practicing how not to become, She is the background, the hole in the fabric fro which the real shape is cut"
This is not an easy read as Weston explores the emotionally charged subject of abortion.
Imagine what it would be like to be the outcast, the one who does the dirty job of terminating pregnancies Her protagonist is low on the totem pole in the rank of surgeons.
She lives without support from her peers, a solitary, sad, lonely role,
Fair warning, Dirty Work has scenes describing abortion that may be offensive to some, It certainly made me think, took me back to my own pregnancies, miscarriages and time training as an LPN.
It has the makings of a good book discussion if participants can respect the view point of others, I wanted to like this book, I really did, However it was a struggle for me to even finish it, The doctor performs abortionsat times she seems very meek and ashamed of what she does and at times she is upset that her colleagues don't take her seriously and leave human part pranks for her.
She does not seem to have any conviction that she is doing the right thing or the strength and ego that is commonly found in doctors.
She is not a very believable character, This is not improved by the fact that she spends most of the book be by unsure of her mental status and whether it is her fault a surgery went sideways.
There is both a pro life and pro choice voice here in the book, but it appears often that the character herself is apologetic throughout ghost the book for the specialty she chose.
Sadly, I do not recommend this book, Promotion of antichoice ideas couched as an exploration of the ethics of abortion told from the perspective of an obgyn.
I thought this book would be intelligent, balanced and scientific because I read about it on NPR, Instead, I found it disappointing and dishonest,
The premise didn't sit well with me, because boiled down to its essentials, it assumes that there is something "dirty" and shameful about abortions, and that, abortions terminate life.
Physicians routinely perform and have some clinical distance from gutwrenching procedures that seem repugnant to the layperson, Yet, here, our antihero purports that each abortion carries some degree of sadness, Moreover, in her view, with each termination, she, as a provider, crosses a theoretically immoral line of noreturn, Simultaneously, she fails to recognize how critical her care was to her patients and the value of her profession to the world at large.
I simply do not believe that the modern, obgyn community shares that view,
Where are the patients who are relieved, who thank her for helping them carry out an important, lifechanging decision to not be forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy, or the women who, in fact, aren't sad about their choice Where are the doctors who don't face inner conflict and guilt about performing abortions In Weston's world, these people don't exist.
This story does not do justice to the women who undergo the procedure nor the doctors who provide abortions.
I bought this book ages agoprobably based on a reviewand finally picked it up, I didn't reread the cover copy, and I'm glad because it made the unfolding of what would be a beautifullywritten but straightforward narrative more compelling.
We know from the start this is about a doctor who has been involved in a medical procedure that went drastically wrong and the board is deciding whether to revoke her license.
It's a slim tome, but gorgeously rendered, There are a lot of tough topics to analyze here and it's definitely not for anyone squeamish, It would make for a fantastic book club read but in many groups would prove extremely controversial, I wish there was a little more meat to the story, . . it's really more about the protagonist's career versus the protagonist herself, For me the strongest aspect to the story was the analysis of her career and how she ended up in this place.
Well done. .