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A review by weaselweader
An Irish Doctor in Peace and at War by Patrick Taylor
5.0
“It’s no place for a man when his wife’s having a wean”
Prenatal classes and the notion of a man holding his partner’s hand and coaching her breathing as she gave birth? Forget it! In 1960s Ballybucklebo (as in most of the “civilized” world at that time), when it came to the birthing process, most men simply beat a hasty retreat and waited in their local with their friends while the event played out. Misogyny and male machismo was culturally endemic and equality of the sexes was an idea whose time had yet to come. With much thumping of puffed-up chests, men went so far as to crow about the additional dose of masculinity they believed it took to sire male progeny over mere daughters.
“Any ould tinker can put a hole in the bottom of a bucket … but it takes a craftsman to put a spout on a teapot.”
And the point of this lengthy preamble would be? I read a number of other reviews of AN IRISH DOCTOR IN PEACE AND AT WAR that took issue with Fingal O’Reilly’s immature reversion to jealousy when he realized that his new wife had actually had a past relationship with another man she cared about deeply. Personally, my take was that, despite his forward thinking acceptance of a female doctor and his willingness to help a young woman achieve admission to medical school, he was still a man of the 60s in a deeply misogynistic culture. In short, AN IRISH DOCTOR IN PEACE AND AT WAR is a masterful portrayal of both 1940s World War II culture and a more modern, but still problematic, 1960s Ireland.
As novel #9 in Canadian author, Patrick Taylor’s wildly successful IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR series, AN IRISH DOCTOR IN PEACE AND AT WAR continues to fill in Fingal O’Reilly’s past as a young man first coming to grips with his craft in the 1930s and a war torn Europe in the 1940s. Like the television series M*A*S*H that portrayed the emergency “meatball” surgery of an American mobile hospital in the Korean War, it portrays the gruesome realities of impossibly stressful emergency surgery and medicine aboard a WW II battleship in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic. It introduces fans to O’Reilly’s first wife whom we already know he will somehow lose to be later re-united as a widower with his first love. And, of course, it continues to portray O’Reilly’s life and growth in a series of heartwarming vignettes that will simultaneously put a lump in the throat and a smile on the face of any reader.
Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss
Prenatal classes and the notion of a man holding his partner’s hand and coaching her breathing as she gave birth? Forget it! In 1960s Ballybucklebo (as in most of the “civilized” world at that time), when it came to the birthing process, most men simply beat a hasty retreat and waited in their local with their friends while the event played out. Misogyny and male machismo was culturally endemic and equality of the sexes was an idea whose time had yet to come. With much thumping of puffed-up chests, men went so far as to crow about the additional dose of masculinity they believed it took to sire male progeny over mere daughters.
“Any ould tinker can put a hole in the bottom of a bucket … but it takes a craftsman to put a spout on a teapot.”
And the point of this lengthy preamble would be? I read a number of other reviews of AN IRISH DOCTOR IN PEACE AND AT WAR that took issue with Fingal O’Reilly’s immature reversion to jealousy when he realized that his new wife had actually had a past relationship with another man she cared about deeply. Personally, my take was that, despite his forward thinking acceptance of a female doctor and his willingness to help a young woman achieve admission to medical school, he was still a man of the 60s in a deeply misogynistic culture. In short, AN IRISH DOCTOR IN PEACE AND AT WAR is a masterful portrayal of both 1940s World War II culture and a more modern, but still problematic, 1960s Ireland.
As novel #9 in Canadian author, Patrick Taylor’s wildly successful IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR series, AN IRISH DOCTOR IN PEACE AND AT WAR continues to fill in Fingal O’Reilly’s past as a young man first coming to grips with his craft in the 1930s and a war torn Europe in the 1940s. Like the television series M*A*S*H that portrayed the emergency “meatball” surgery of an American mobile hospital in the Korean War, it portrays the gruesome realities of impossibly stressful emergency surgery and medicine aboard a WW II battleship in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic. It introduces fans to O’Reilly’s first wife whom we already know he will somehow lose to be later re-united as a widower with his first love. And, of course, it continues to portray O’Reilly’s life and growth in a series of heartwarming vignettes that will simultaneously put a lump in the throat and a smile on the face of any reader.
Highly recommended.
Paul Weiss