Book Review: Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures

Booklist
September 1, 2007

am's debut collection, a Canadian best-seller, unblinkingly captures the angst, personal and professional, of four University of Ottawa med students as they wend their ways from classroom to residency. The trials of Ming, Sri, Chen, and Fitz ricochet from heartbreaking to darkly humorous with precious little downtime in between. Alternating omniscience and the first-person musings of Chen, Lam uses the stories to plumb the four's good, bad, and ugly characteristics. Ming, the only woman, and Fitz try to sublimate and end up sabotaging their love for one another as they study for exams; Ming moves on. Sri becomes so personally attached to patients that at one point he begins to wonder whether it is he or a paranoid patient who is the true psychotic. Although Chen makes a Herculean effort to maintain tight control over his own humanity, he, too, struggles to keep private concerns separate from concomitant professional life-and-death decisions. Lam won a richly deserved Giller Prize for this tender, grisly, sad, funny, illuminating book.

© Booklist 2007