The Good Doctor

[purplebongowoman]

I found this book very sad. It is set in post apartheid South Africa. A young doctor is posted to a hospital in one of the homelands set up during the apartheid regime. He is idealistic about the future, and wants to be part of the new South Africa, but he is destroyed by the old. The evil is insiduous, men following their own appetites, standing by when atrocities are committed. There is a sense of hopelessness. It left me feeling quite depressed. The alienation between black and white was starkly portrayed.

[megustaleer]

Restored posts

Hazel 8th January 2006 07:37 PM

I really enjoyed this book, depsite its depressing subject matter. Post-apartheid , the characters in this hospital seem to be caught in the limbo affecting the country, the people, the government, the settlements, and life in Africa itself. The idealistic doctor, Laurence, is painfully desperate to change the world around him and is held back by the old ways. The setting of a near empty, forgotten about and underused hospital reinforces this feeling of being caught in limbo as life doesn't progress, patients don't come in and all the residents are in some sort of 'God's waiting room'. It is as if they are patients themselves, with their lives on hold until something better happens or something changes. The hospital administrator is the worst kind kind of apathetic creature, not wanting to rock the boat or enforce change herself and I felt she really was the villian of the piece allowing the old ways to continue and closing herself off to the new ways and in particular anything to do with Laurence.

Galgut, himself, I was very impressed with. He writes with a natural story telling skill and some of his lines are almost poetic in their beauty and truth.

I really enjoyed this book, and though it left me sad, it also managed to leave me with a smile on my face...remarkably.
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Mungus 8th January 2006 07:48 PM
It has been a while since I read this book but I remember being very moved by the desolation and isolation of the hospital and how this affects its characters. Do you think that the story could be moved to any other country or is it a South African story? I don't know enough about the country to comment, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone with local knowledge.

Before Hazel revived the thread, I'd been reminded about the book by a patient of mine who has recently moved back to the UK from S. Africa and paints a very impressive picture of the health care service there. Needless to say, my patient is is white and wealthy.
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Hazel 9th January 2006 08:40 AM
:Originally Posted by Mungus
Do you think that the story could be moved to any other country or is it a South African story? I don't know enough about the country to comment, but I'd be interested to hear from anyone with local knowledge.

Clearly I have no local knowledge but I think this was a story particular to Africa when such a massive political change occurred and alot of the country was left in limbo for a long time. The geographical landscape and climate would have only added to the isolation and aided the desolation. People must have really been left without a clue as to how the country would progress once the old regime was abolished.

[Grammath]

I read this for my RL book group, and was surprised to realise it is the first novel I can recall ever reading by a South African writer.

The book's narrator, Dr. Frank Eloff junior, is on the staff in an rundown hospital in the crumbling former capital of one of the former homelands shortly after the end of apartheid. Lacking the resources to treat most of its patients, little happens at the hospital, and indeed in the whole town and Frank, escaping from his former life in Pretoria, likes it that way.

Another white doctor, Laurence Waters, arrives at the hospital to do a year's community service. Laurence is everything Frank is not: young, enthusiastic and idealistic, his presence causes ripples Frank resents. However, since Frank and Laurence must share a room, they form an uneasy bond.

This brief synopsis makes it sound as if "The Good Doctor" simply contrasts youthful optimism with middle-aged cynicism, but South Africa's dark past overshadows the novel through the unknown whereabouts of the homeland's former dictator and the arrival of the army in the town, which brings back unpleasant memories for Frank, and the lives of natives such as the hospital's only nurse, Tehogo, and Maria, a woman from a local bush village with whom Frank has a relationship. There is also Frank's toe curling visit to his father to drive the point home about how the country has changed.

Galgut's ability to sustain an air of unease, tension and claustrophobia throughout the book is most impressive - the atmosphere is in an odd way reminiscent of "The Lord of the Flies" as the novel builds towards its climax. The prose is as stark as the landscape it describes, vaguely reminding me from a stylistic point of view of J G Ballard novels like "Cocaine Nights". The way Frank mulls over the moral dimensions of his actions recalls Graham Greene too.

This is a very fine novel indeed and worthy of its Booker nomination back in 2003. Why the dreadful "Vernon God Little" got the nod that year on a shortlist that contained this, "Brick Lane" and "Notes on a Scandal" I will never understand. I shall be adding more of Galgut's work to Mount TBR.

[Hazel]

I shall be adding more of Galgut's work to Mount TBR.

Since I read The Good Doctor, I bought The Quarry - but haven't gotten round to it yet. A timely reminder, thanks Grammath.

[SlowRain]

Thanks for bumping this thread up, Grammath. This novel was recommended to me a few years back as being in a similar vein to Graham Greene. I never pursued it much further, but I'm now more curious about it after your comments.