History of the Present Illness - Softcover

Louise Aronson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408832127 ISBN 13: 9781408832127

Publisher: U.S.A.: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2013

Synopsis

A busy doctor juggles an errant teenage daughter and a seriously ill father. An elderly immigrant sacrifices his demented wife's well-being to satisfy his son's authority. A trainee becomes delirious with lack of sleep but must learn how to act, and not react, in the face of suffering. A psychiatrist who advocates for the underserved may herself be crazy. Together these deeply humane linked stories - at once funny and honest, incisive and compassionate - explore the impact of illness on real people's lives and offer a portrait of health and medicine like nothing we have read before. Set in hospitals, offices, nursing homes, prisons, family apartments and out and about in the city, A History of the Present Illness creates a world pulsating with life and introduces a striking new literary voice.

About this title

About the Author:

Louise Aronson has an MFA in fiction and an MD from Harvard Medical School. She has won the Sonora Review prize, the New Millennium Writings short fiction award and has received three Pushcart nominations. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California where she cares for frail older patients and directs the Pathways to Discovery Program, the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center and UCSF Medical Humanities. She lives in San Francisco.

From Booklist:

San Francisco is the setting of this collection of 16 short stories by physician-author Aronson. The patients, families, and doctors populating these tales are clobbered by random events that alter their lives. Missed opportunities and poor decisions also get plenty of play. In one story, a physician is charged with killing a patient. In another, an angry, bratty teenage daughter runs away from home. We never learn her fate or what happens to the worrying parents. A purposeful dearth of denouement occurs in other provocation tales. The gem of the collection, “Lucky You,” recounts what happens when an 11-year-old boy tumbles down a cliff. A dog walker happens to be at the scene of the accident but is hesitant to intervene even though she has medical training. Aronson effectively illustrates just how jumbled life can be. Hope is limping barely one step ahead of sadness. Human devotion and division, responsibility to self and others are only a smidgen of the subject matter examined by talented and knowledgeable Aronson. --Tony Miksanek

About this edition

• Publisher: U.S.A.: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 1408832127
• ISBN 13: 9781408832127
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288