Bloodletting and Miracle Cures - Book Review

http://www.vincentlam.ca/060122-medical-tales.php
Medical tales presage promising writing career

Book review by Harriet Zaidman, Winnipeg Free Press
January 22, 2006

Toronto physician Vincent Lam uses his own experiences to proffer 12
related short stories in his well-written debut, Bloodletting and Miracle
Cures. He traces the careers of four doctors, from their days as aspiring
medical students, through the rigours of medical college and into the real
world, where their Hippocratic oaths are tested. Lam demonstrates a
surgical use of wit to create realistic characters whose foibles are
gradually exposed. His portrayals make for believable scenarios at the
University of Toronto and beyond. He drops in and out of his characters'
lives, enlarging on traits hinted at in earlier stories, reminiscent of
the method employed by the former Selkirk physician Kevin Patterson in his
2003 short-story collection Country of Cold.

How to Get Into Medical School Part 1 will likely be the signature piece
of Lam's collection. Ming and Fitzgerald are two keeners who pretend to
each other that they are the only ones devoted to helping humanity. Of
course, each has other objectives. Ming wants to satisfy her own ambitions
and her parents. Fitz wants Ming. Ming finally declares her love for him,
but insists on a clandestine romance because, she claims, her family
expects her to marry a Chinese man. She assures Fitz she will tell her
parents, but the right moment never comes. When her father listens in on
their phone calls, Ming becomes the obedient daughter: "[T]hen she would
say to Fitzgerald in a voice that was halfway between meek library mouse
and breathless seducer, 'Thank you for helping me with my study problems,'
and all three would hang up."

A cadaver named Murphy (Take All of Murphy) is the focus of the
psychological and academic pressures that Ming and colleagues Sri and Chen
experience in their first year of medical school. As the body is unwrapped
and cut open to reveal its tissues and organs, the wraps come off the
students' personalities. Ming's too-big white lab coat gets dirty, as she
becomes all business, while Sri insists on respect for Murphy's tattoos.

The old world and the new juxtapose in A Long Migration. Chen, as the
doctor-in-the-family, is designated to administer unknown herbal brews to
his dying grandfather in Brisbane, Australia. His one year of modern
medical training is to be put to use so relatives will know exactly when
to fly in from around the world to visit his grandfather before he dies;
not earlier, not later.

How far does a physician's responsibility to the patient and society
extend? Lam deals with the complex issues of duty and conscience in
Winston and Eli. In Afterwards, the circumstances of a husband and
father's death in the emergency room cloud the shock of his loss. The
absurdity and risks of childbirth will reverberate with today's parents in
An Insistent Tide.

Patients often assume that doctors lead flawless lives. Lam presents the
human side of Chen, who hopes his professional standing will trump fatigue
in Before Light. Fitz's weaknesses and the decisions he makes turn him
into a shadow of what he could have been in Night Flight, certainly the
saddest of the stories. Fitz, now flying medical evacuations from exotic
locations, continues his lifetime of lies so that he can rationalize his
conduct.

Fitz and Chen meet again as victims of the 2003 SARS crisis in Contact
Tracing, the only slightly unbelievable story, since it is hard to imagine
patients who are that sick talking or laughing as much as they do, as they
recall their shared history.

Lam's skilful writing style builds interest and tension while it addresses
current issues and dilemmas in the medical world. His literary debut shows
promise in anticipation of his first novel, which will be published in
2007.

Harriet Zaidman is a teacher-librarian in Winnipeg.

© Winnipeg Free Press 2006


http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2006/11/07/giller-prize.html

Toronto's Vincent Lam wins Giller Prize
Last Updated: Wednesday, November 8, 2006 | 12:26 PM ET
CBC Arts

Toronto-based author Vincent Lam has won the Giller Prize, Canada's
richest and most prestigious literary award, for his book of linked short
stories, Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures.

The $40,000 Giller Prize was handed out at a gala hosted by Justin Trudeau
in Toronto Tuesday evening.

Vincent Lam, author of Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, says he
wanted to be a writer but went into medicine so he would have some life
experience. Vincent Lam, author of Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, says
he wanted to be a writer but went into medicine so he would have some life
experience.
(Doubleday Books)

Lam, 32, who is an emergency room physician as well as a writer, said he
was "astonished" by the win.

"Luck is not what it seems and most of it falls into the category of
divine blessing or people who have been kind to you," he said in an
acceptance speech that honoured his publisher and writer Margaret Atwood.

Lam was a ship's doctor when he met Atwood on an Arctic cruise.

Atwood agreed to read his work and became his mentor and advocate. She
introduced his book at the Giller ceremony.

"It has something ? and that something is authenticity and drama and a
feel of gritty real life," she said.

Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is about medical students and young
doctors, a world Lam was immersed in when he started writing the book, a
year after finishing his residency.

Lam typically spends his mornings writing and his afternoons and evenings
working in the emergency department at a Toronto hospital, he told CBC
Radio in an interview earlier Tuesday.

"I'm exhausted as a writer by the time I finish my writing day, but often
that just makes me very pleased to go to the hospital because, after a
frustrating day of facing the empty page, it's an immense relief, in fact,
to go to the hospital and see real people with real problems with chest
pain and cuts and fevers," he said.

The son of Chinese immigrants from Vietnam, Lam said he wanted to be a
writer before he decided on becoming a doctor.

"I think I was about 14 or 15 years old and I sat down to write at that
point and suddenly had the horrible realization that I had nothing
whatsoever to write about ... so I thought I should probably go out into
the world and learn something about it before trying to write about it,"
he said.

Lam chose medicine, naively thinking it would give him flexibility and
time to write.

Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is his first book of fiction. His debut
novel is due out in 2007.

This year's Giller nomination list was remarkable for steering clear of
Canada's best-known writers and choosing relative unknowns published
through small publishing houses.

The other nominees were:

* Gaétan Soucy of Montreal for The Immaculate Conception, a dark tale
of arson and chance set in the city's east end in the 1920s.
* Pascale Quiviger, a Montrealer now living in Italy, who won a
Governor General's Award for French fiction for her love story, The
Perfect Circle.
* Beirut-born Rawi Hage of Montreal for De Niro's Game, which follows
two young men during the war in Lebanon.
* Carol Windley of Nanaimo, B.C., for Home Schooling, a short story
collection set on Vancouver Island and in the Pacific Northwest.

Each of the nominees receives $2,500 in prize money.

Both The Immaculate Conception and The Perfect Circle were translations
from French.

The jury members for this year's Giller Prize were former governor general
Adrienne Clarkson, short story writer Alice Munro and novelist Michael
Winter.

The Giller prize was created in 1994 by businessman Jack Rabinovitch in
honour of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller.

Last year, Scotiabank became a sponsor and boosted total prize money from
$40,000 to $50,000.



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