Fiction Pick of the Week - On The Ravine

Fiona Capp and Cameron woodhead, WAtoday
April 14, 2023

n his 2006 book of stories, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, Canadian physician Vincent Lam explored the metamorphosis of medical students into doctors with eye-opening acuity. On the Ravine is a novel enriched by experience, too.

The author moved from emergency medicine to specialise in treating addiction, and his fictional alter-ego, Dr Chen, finds himself on the frontline of an increasingly urgent opioid epidemic. Chen keeps the faces of dead patients on his phone, and wages the battle to save lives with caution.

When he meets Claire, a violinist who overdoses twice in one day, his usual arsenal of empathy, strategy, psychology, and clinical sleuthing (addicts lie, early and often, but useful truths can be deduced even from this) may not be enough, and the doctor/patient relationship becomes ever more complex to navigate. It’s a thought-provoking, wise, and compassionate novel on a subject of philosophical, as well as medical, import.

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