Doctors and Nurses - Hardcover

Lucy Ellmann

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747580073 ISBN 13: 9780747580072

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2006

Synopsis

A hilarious new novel set in a rural doctor's office by the queen of "pitch-black comedy."

Nursing is a noble calling. So what the hell attracted Jen, a gigantic nurse with a habit of killing her patients? Now she's had the temerity, and misfortune, to fall in love with her boss, a dishy dashing doc known throughout the land for his long limbs, grey eyes, cleft chin, arresting bedside manner and other stereotypical attributes. Jen is ready to trample the ever-growing pile of prostrate patients in order to surrender herself utterly to him, but whenever she gets the chance, he's winched up into the air by helicopter, to attend yet another medical emergency! It's a prescription for disaster.

In her devastating send-up of life and love in a country doctor's office, Lucy Ellmann conducts a public autopsy on the failings of modern medicine, armed only with pathos, passion, pethidine, and a pasta machine.

About this title

About the Author

Lucy Ellmann was born in the United States but moved to England as a teenager. Her other novels are Dot in the Universe, Sweet Desserts, Man or Mango? and Varying Degrees of Hopelessness. She now lives in Scotland.

From Publishers Weekly

What bizarre comic riffs can the incomparable Ellmann spin from a romantic medical mismatch? Breathtakingly brutal ones, as per usual, for the author of Man or Mango, but also bright, direct and playful—and full of CAPS. After Ellmann's enormous nurse, Jen, takes a job in "A RURAL BACKWATER" of Great Britain with general practitioner Dr. Roger Lewis, her every move is chronicled in excruciating, digressive, sidesplitting detail. ("THE JOB INTERVIEW ITSELF" is followed by "JEN'S BODY," which is followed by "WHAT'S IT REALLY LIKE TO HAVE A BODY?") Jen's obesity is mercilessly harped- on throughout, as are her oversized appetites for food, sex, violence and her handsome new employer—who is married, with children. Roger, who is more than game, happily scams patients and shrugs off lawsuit-worthy mistakes, quickly winning Jen's wicked heart. Their unlikely affair, complicated by annoying patients ("their frequent need to DIE or have BABIES") and Roger's sexual indiscretions, accommodates biting observations on the state of contemporary medicine and romance. Graphic medically and sexually, Ellmann's latest is not for the squeamish, but it's a hilarious exaggeration of a profession's foibles. (Mar.)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0747580073
• ISBN 13: 9780747580072
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 1