A Dublin student doctor

Format:

Book (large print)

Title:

A Dublin student doctor

Author:

Taylor, Patrick, 1941-

ISBN:

9781410445933

Edition:

Large print ed.

Publication Information:

Waterville, Me. : Thorndike Press, 2012.

Physical Description:

667 pages (large print) ; 23 cm.

Series title(s):

Irish country novel ;

Number in series:

Summary:

In the 1930s, fresh from a stint in the Royal Navy Reserve and against his father's wishes, Fingal O'Reilly goes to Dublin to study medicine. Facing the arduous demands of Trinity College and Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital, Fingal still manages to box and play rugby - and romance a fetching nurse named Kitty O'Hallorhan. But Dublin is a city of slums, tenements, and brutal poverty. Can Fingal harden himself to the suffering all around him? (Bestseller).

Personal Subject:

O'Reilly, Fingal Flahertie (Fictitious character)-Fiction.

Subject(s):

Medical students -- Fiction.

Large type books.

Dublin (Ireland) -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Dublin (Ireland) -- Fiction.

Genre:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Salem Main Library	LP Taylor, P.	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Independence Public Library	LP FICTION - TAYLOR	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

In a novel that looks at the past of Dr. Fingal O'Reilly, Fingal enrolls at Dublin's Trinity College to study medicine, where he witnesses the plight of the city's poor, boxes and plays rugby, tries to keep up with his studies and work at Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital and romances a nurse named Kitty O'Hallorhan.

Author Notes

Patrick Taylor is a medical researcher and best-selling novelist. He was born in 1941 and brought up in Bangor, Northern Ireland, Taylor studied and practiced medicine in Belfast and rural Ulster before immigrating to Canada in 1970. He has received three lifetime achievement awards including the Lifetime Award of Excellence in Reproductive Medicine of the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society.

He has written or contributed to 170 academic papers and six textbooks and also served as editor-in-chief of the Canadian Obstetrics and Gynaecology Journal, as well as writing a monthly medical humour column and serving as book reviewer for Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour.

Taylor has also published six books of creative writing, all set in Northern Ireland: a short-story collection entitled Only Wounded: Ulster Stories, and three novels: Pray for Us Sinners and its sequel Now and in the Hour of Our Death, and The Apprenticeship of Doctor Laverty (short listed for the BC Book awards fiction prize for 2005).

In 2007 The Apprenticeship of Doctor Laverty was reprinted in hardcover under the title, An Irish Country Doctor; it was the Novel of the Month in March 2007. It then became a NY Times bestseller. It has currently been translated into nine other languages. Two sequels were published, An Irish Country Village (March 2008), and An Irish Country Christmas (Oct 2008). Taylor is working on the fourth book in this series.

Taylor now lives in Ireland. (Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

The latest of Taylor's Irish Country Doctor series, this time a prequel depicting protagonist Fingal O'Reilly's med-student days.The extended flashback which takes up most of the book begins when Fingal, on his way home to Ballybucklebo, the Ulster village where he is a family doctor, stops at the scene of an accident: Donal Donnelly, Ballybucklebo's lovable ne'er-do-well, has crashed his motor bike and suffered head trauma. While monitoring Donal's condition at a nearby hospital, Fingal recalls his clinical training at Trinity College, serving indigent patients from Dublin's slums.Fingal's literature professor father was so opposed to Fingal's chosen career that he refused to bankroll his son's education, forcing Fingal to spend four years in the merchant marine to earn the tuition. His long-suffering mother, who'd dreamed of being a physician herself, encourages Fingal and eventually his father comes around. At school, Fingal weathers a series of scrapes in between pints of Guinness at the local pub with his three best friends.He ponders getting engaged to Kitty, a student nurse, but failing an exam is enough to convince him that he needs to forego romance for studying.Fingal raises some hackles because he sees his patients as people, not cases:he mourns when his first cardiac patient cannot be saved, and finds a job for an impoverished veteran whom he treated for pneumonia.When his father is diagnosed with leukemia, Fingal wonders if he will live long enough to see his son graduate.Although it will appeal to faithful followers of the series, this book suffers from a plodding pace and a lack of suspense. (There's never any real question about whether Fingal will earn his degree, or whether he and Kitty will wind up together.)As with other volumes, the principal appeal is in the dialects, local color and, for fans of medical fiction, the detailed descriptions ofdiagnoses and treatment regimens, both present-day and preWorld War II.Adheres scrupulously to the motto "first, do no harm."]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.