3 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
When you hear the word 'surgeon', what comes to your mind? Is it an image of a doctor holding surgical instruments and performing a surgery? Then you're in for a huge surprise. Surgeons we get to know in McDowell are politicians engaging in politics related to healthcare.
McDowell written by William H. Coles is a fiction consisting of two parts, the rise and fall of surgeon Hiram McDowell. It consists of 72 chapters and is written using the third person multiple point of view. Informal language is used for this.
Hiram McDowell is a surgeon who has a passion for mountain climbing. He has already climbed all the highest mountains in Nepal. The first part of the novel is about Hiram's rise to power. He is elected to the board of directors of international college of surgeons. But he is an ambitious man. So he sways votes in favour of him to become the president of the board but forgets to keep his promises which leads to many problems in his life. He is also nominated as the secretary for health and human services.
Among his three children, his daughter Sophie who is a photographer and Paige Sterling a television journalist play major roles in the events taking place in his life.
The death of Hiram's grandson who commits suicide leads to the imprisonment of Hiram. This is the turning point in his life. The second part of the fiction is about his life after he escapes from prison. It revolves around what he learns about life, how those life lessons change him while Paige, a detective agency hired by Paige, and authorities try to capture him.
Though the plot looks simple enough, it has such a depth to it. What I liked most about this book is how readers feel a myriad of emotions throughout the book. All directed at a single character. It is written in such a way even the reader doesn't know when his feelings towards Hiram changes. In the beginning, you completely despise him but by the end of the book, you want him to succeed and the authorities to fail.
I liked how the author was capable of capturing the reality so well. Every reaction of Hiram was genuine and realistic. All characters were credible. Character development was incredible. Nothing was artificial. Also, the author discussed a lot of issues prevailing in modern society like the plight of women in third world countries, journalism for political gain, adultery, incestuous relationships, mass school murder, suicide, corruption, parental neglect etc. This fiction gave insight on Nepal and its culture as well.
What I disliked is the way the author has given excessive details on almost everything except for those things of importance. For an example, to describe a building or the clothes of a person he spends paragraphs while he has only said Hiram escaped prison using a single line. No details regarding how it was done or anything else regarding it were found in this fiction.
The ePub copy I got wasn't edited properly. It lacked so many spaces. Therefore, it took more than the necessary effort to read the book and it was extremely hard to track errors since you can't find errors with a glance. This made me deduct a star. So I'm scoring it 3 out of 4 stars. Even if the excessive descriptions were a turnoff for me, it's not enough to deduct another star. Also, the depth of the book and the character development more than made up for those minor flaws.
I'd like to recommend this book to those who like to read about issues in modern society and are fed up with protagonists who are always doing the right things. I don't think this will be suitable for young readers since there are some sensitive issues within the context.
******
McDowell
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon | on iTunes | on Smashwords
Like Hiruni Bhagya 81's review? Post a comment saying so!
