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Summary
Summary
Patrick Taylor first charmed readers with An Irish Country Doctor, a warm and enchanting novel in the tradition of James Herriot and Jan Karon. Now Taylor returns to the colorful Northern Ireland community of Ballybucklebo, where there's always something brewing beneath the village's deceptively sleepy surface.
Young Doctor Barry Laverty has only just begun his assistantship under his eccentric mentor, Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, but he already feels right at home in Ballybucklebo. When the sudden death of a patient casts a cloud over Barry's reputation, his chances of establishing himself in the village are endangered, especially since the grieving widow is threatening a lawsuit.
While he anxiously waits for the postmortem results that he prays will exonerate him, Barry must regain the trust of the gossipy Ulster village, one patient at a time. From a put-upon shop girl with a mysterious rash to the troubled pregnancy of a winsome young lass who's not quite married yet, Ballybucklebo provides plenty of cases to keep the two country G.P.s busy.
Not all their challenges are medical in nature. When a greedy developer sets his sights on the very heart of the community, the village pub, it's up to the doctors to save the Black Swan (affectionately known to the locals as the "Mucky Duck") from being turned into an overpriced tourist trap. After all, the good citizens of Ballybucklebo need some place to drink to each other's health. . . .
Whether you've visited in the past, or are discovering Ballybucklebo for the first time, An Irish Country Village is an ideal location for anyone looking for wit, warmth, and just a touch of blarney.
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 (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This highly readable sequel to An Irish Country Doctor follows the trials and exultations of Dr. Barry Laverty as he begins his assistantship to Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly in Balleybucklebo, a fictional Irish Ulster village of the 1960s. Barry loves his diverse work-conjunctivitis to obstetrics-and his provincial patients are keen on folk wisdom and proverbs. He grows fond and admiring of his gruff, imposing senior colleague, who heals bodies and also attacks social maladies, like the greedy local councilor who threatens to turn the Black Swan, a local pub, into a tourist trap. Meanwhile, Barry's infatuation with plucky engineering student Patricia Spence thickens, though her ambition may land her a scholarship that would lure her to Cambridge. And then there's the matter of a potential career-ending lawsuit by a recent widow whose husband died after Barry botched a diagnosis. Detailed medical procedures of the era are fascinating to a modern reader, though Taylor sometimes throws in too much play-by-play. The book, with its spot-on dialects (a glossary is included for those who don't know what, say, "soft hand under a duck" means) and neatly tied endings, largely succeeds as light entertainment. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Taylor, a native of County Down in Northern Ireland, introduced the imaginary but oh-so-real village of Ballybucklebo in An Irish Country Doctor (2007), and to it he returns for the end of young Dr. Barry Laverty's apprenticeship under demanding but empathetic Dr. Fingal Flaherty O'Reilly. Barry's fallen in love with charming, ambitious Patricia, who hopes to leave Ireland soon, if she wins a sought-after scholarship to Cambridge. Meanwhile, a patient suddenly dies, leaving Laverty's future in doubt, for in a gossipy small town, how can malpractice be forgotten? All comes right in the end, including the salvation of the town pub from a greedy developer who planned to tart it up for visiting Americans. Full of stories and vivid characters, the novel recalls a good night in a pub. Its greatest charm lies in homey Ulster idioms, such as sorry won't butter any parsnips, running around like a bee on a hot brick, and if you were laying sod, I'd have to tell you to put it green side up. Good, light entertainment.--Monaghan, Patricia Copyright 2008 Booklist