Review by Anna Garris Goiser
Alice Adams's tenth novel explores the role doctors play as men and as medical authorities in the lives of two friends Molly Bonner and Felicia Flood.
Until a garden party at Felicia's, Molly's acquaintance with doctors is of a strictly professional nature. On the other hand, earthy blonde Felicia -- who, according to Molly, possesses "the soul of a courtesan" and lives to love, grow roses, and cook, all with abundant generosity -- makes a career of surveying the Bay Area medical community before settling into a long-standing affair with married heart surgeon Raleigh "Sandy" Sanderson. At Felicia's party, Molly meets recently widowed Dr. David Jacobs and is less than impressed until a general discomfort, which she assumes is the result of allergies, erupts in a nosebleed, and Dave accompanies her home and suggests she see a good ENT man.
Dave, born to be married and actively lining up his next wife, pursues Molly, and she reluctantly drifts into a relationship with him, about which she has ambiguous feelings. In the meantime, she is diagnosed of a malignant tumor in her sinuses. During the course of her surgery, radiation therapy, and slow convalescence, Dave assumes management of Molly's treatment as a way of controlling her, staving off her bids for independence with emotional blackmail of the "after all I've done for you" variety.
Until faced with a life-threatening illness, Molly views the doctors of her acquaintance as remote beings of little personal interest to her. However, when she's in the position of relying on them for her very life, she becomes deeply concerned with what appears to be arrested emotional development, personal moral irresponsibility, and unflagging arrogance from which they appear to suffer. Her struggle to reconcile her needs with reality is the core of this fascinating and unusual novel.
As is characteristic of Adams's previous work, the characters of Medicine Men are drawn with an acute eye for exquisite detail, as well as a genuine compassion for the human condition. The pacing and texture of this latest work feels very much like her excellent early short stories, and one is amazed upon reaching the end that it is, indeed a novel.
Medicine Men is yet another example of Adams's ability to reflect back to us the surprisingly small worlds we construct for our comfort, showing us clearly the invisible walls we throw up against the vastness of the world beyond.
Anna Garris Goiser is a freelance writer in Washington, DC.
©1997, ProMotion, inc.