Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures
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Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures

3.34 of 5 stars 3.34  ·  rating details  ·  1,821 ratings  ·  274 reviews

Now in paperback: Twelve interwoven stories follow four young and ambitious doctors as they move from the challenges of medical school to the intense world of emergency rooms, evacuation missions, and terrifying new viruses. They fall in love as they study for their exams, face moral dilemmas as they split open cadavers, confront police who rough up their patients, and tre

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Paperback, 400 pages
Published February 1st 2009 by Harper Perennial (first published January 17th 2006)
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Kyla
3.5 - I'm really. really surprised this won the Giller Prize. Another case of a Doctor writes a book based on his work history and the critics swoon, because it's not a world typical writers come from or an arena that they cover. A novelty act, almost. Some stories are interesting, but again, I would add it's not because of the writing per se (which is readable but plain, not spare plain, just plain plain), as much as the backstage peek at a Dr.'s life. Also, it just makes me mad when other prof...more
Rosa
This book has all kinds of impressive blurbs on the back cover, including praise from Margaret Atwood and Sherman Alexie himself (who has never struck me as the easy to please type) - I initially sought it out because of a really favorable review in Entertainment Weekly. Maybe all the hoopla led me to expect too much, but I just didn't see what the big deal was. Lam is a very skilled and nuanced writer, but it still seemed like most of the stories were more driven by plot than by character devel...more
Sue
This is an extremely interesting book, especially if you are acquainted with anyone who has endured the appallingly stressful rigors of medical school and lived to tell about it. Written by an author who has done just that, this book is a work of fiction that interweaves the stories of several aspiring young doctors and follows them through their professional lives. Along the way, he reveals them to be intelligent, ambitious, complicated, and very, very human. In other words, he tells his sto...more
kingshearte
Short stories are not really my favourite type of reading, but this was here, and I'd heard good things about it, so I read it. It was actually really good, despite having won a Canadian literary award. I found almost all the stories very interesting and quite compelling.

However. It still had the various issues that make me not really care for the short story as a form. Although you do get some insight, in the context of whatever the current situation being painted is, you don't really...more
Neil Mudde
A great first plus Giller prize for Dr. Lam,, it gives one a good insight as to how to go about getting into medical school, never be satisfied with just 80% 100% is a must
A great insight into different cultures, Ming who is Chinese, is driven through her family to reach her highest potential, along the way she shacks up with Fitzgerald, who turns out to have problems, Ming is so organized and sets a schedule for Fitzgerald which does not allow him any free time, not wanting to give the who...more
Parksy
3.5

Some very good true to life medical stories, mixes with some not so great fiction character studies. Worth a read overall though.
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Book Description
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures welcomes readers into a world where the most mundane events can quickly become life or death. By following four young medical students and physicians – Ming, Fitz, Sri and Chen – this debut collection from 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Vincent Lam is a riveting, ...more
Heather
Really good. I enjoyed it a lot and found the narrative really interesting and striking in some places. It's a series of short stories basically, each one has one or two of the main characters in and follows a loose timeline from the start of their careers and as they get older and more experienced. It's got a nice flow to it and Lam doesn't feel the need to smack you in the face with exposition every time the narrative jumps a few months or years, you can fill in the blanks nicely from the info...more
Bookmarks Magazine

Vincent Lam joins the ranks of doctor-writers with his award-winning debut novel. Compared to the popular TV dramas Grey's Anatomy, House, and ER, Bloodletting (set to become a Canadian TV drama itself) offers an intriguing look at na_ve doctors' lives and aspirations while showcasing the humanity and daily dilemmas they face. In both humorous and worst-case scenarios, Lam depicts how students plot their way into med school, develop strange ties to cadavers, break terrible news to patients' fami

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Bunxena
Bunxena rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition
Recommends it for: people who like realistic medical stories
Recommended to Bunxena by: Julia
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Shirley Schwartz
I am usually not a fan of the short story genre, but I read this book because I'm working my way through the Giller Prize Winner list. This book won in 2006. It is certainly a different look at medicine and the moral and ethical dilemmas that the people in this profession face on a daily basis. I can understand why the book won the award even though I didn't really care for it that much. The series of stories in the book are connected by the four medical students and the course of their careers ...more
Katie
This book was a series of stories about doctors and their patients. The stories followed 4 doctors through their careers, from medical school through mid-career practice, but the stories were also based on their various patients and situations. One doctor's job is to fly to remote areas of the world to rescue patients who need medical care they can only get at home; another pair of doctors are infected with SARS; another doctor must deal with a mentally unstable patient and try to figure out if ...more
Jennifer
I guess I'm fluctuating between giving this 2.5 stars and 3 which I perceive as average or likable for a book I've read. The only female character in this collection is not very likable. The first story centers around her considering an interracial relationship and then the follow up shows how insecure and overly focused (aka neurotic) she is to follow it through so she breaks her boyfriends heart by just ignoring him. After that she is seen in snippets in two other stories.

The char...more
Louise
Ugggh, this was the worst book (which I didn't even finish) that I've read in a long time. The stories were bland and boring with no quality of enjoyment or entertainment whatsoever.

From back cover:

"Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is an astonishing literary debut, a collection of mature and intricate stories connected through the relationships that develop among a group of young doctors as they move from the challenges of med school to the intense world of emergenc...more
Zara
The book is an easy, engaging read (it took me a few days). I didn't realize the chapters were meant to be interrelated short stories until much further down the work. It's an excellent "insider view" from a doctor's perspective, the dilemmas of those in the medical profession: the body politic of the health system, the de-sensitized conditioning necessary to meet high volume and demand, the inevitability of sickness and death, and the tension between remaining professional, yet compas...more
Zoë (In The Next Room)
Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is the debut novel by doctor and author Vincent Lam, and it was also the winner of the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize, a prestigious Canadian literary award. The book is a novel in short story format, with all the stories loosely connected by their main characters Fitzgerald, Ming, Sri and Chen, a format similar to Ray Bradbury's the Martian Chronicles and taking place over several decades. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures begins with the story "How To Get I...more
Stacy
I found this in the shelf in the library where they put all the "hot" items. I am not entirely sure why this is considered a hot item. The writing was readable but very simple, and there wasn't enough character development. I didn't realize it was stories until I started to read it, and I almost put it down immediately. I am not a fan of short stories, but this wasn't your typical shorts piece. It read more like a novel, with a core group of doctors that we first met in college and...more
Marie
This book was an iffy start for me. I wasn't sure I bought in to the first few stories which felt a bit awkward. After reading a few though, my appreciation for both the intertwining of stories and the creativity of this writer grew on me. I enjoyed the glimpse into the world of young doctors and didn't flinch at the glossary in the back, which I think must have been difficult to address for the author- I read the first few chapters wondering what various acronyms were and was a bit surprise...more
Redparrot
I liked this more than I expected. I became aware of it during a CBC interview with Lam and he told the story of being a cruise doctor on which Margaret Atwood was travelling. He made her acquaintance and subsequently gave her a draft for review. It was a lightening-in-the-bottle story that compelled me to see what could spark that kind of success.

I also had it loaned (and recommended further) by a work peer.

It is a series of chapters that can both stand on their own and be ...more
Kerry
Medical drama is the new hot thing, at least on TV, but this book fails to deliver. The stories are depressing, the writing seems to drag on, and the characters are just excruciatingly boring/unlikeable. I esp. hate the character Chen -- she epitomizes every stale stereotype of an overachieving Asian that is more a robot (or study machine) than a human being with a heart. I am just so sick of Asians themselves perpetuating this kind of stereotype. If you want really refreshing contemporary liter...more
Virginia
I'm not usually a fan of short story collections, but i liked almost all of these (only didn't like Night Flight). It helped that they were all connected somehow, i think:) i also liked the progression in the seriousness (relationships and medical) as the characters progressed through med school and to being doctors. I was pleased with myself for how much of the medical terminology i knew, but the notes are worth reading for the author's humourous notes:P Just a note: if you're like me and can o...more
Carin
Carin rated it 4 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition
Recommends it for: medical people, those who like reading about medicine
This is not a novel as such, but a collection of short stories about four medical students (Ming, Chen, Fitzgerald and Sri) as they go through their study and then as doctors.

As a health professional, I really enjoyed this book, as it didn't 'dumb down' the medicine. But it can still be enjoyed by others, thanks to a concise but good glossary at the back of the book.

The only complaint I have is that we didn't really get closure of the characters, only speculation, and t...more
Alyssa
It starts off a little slow and dull but as it progresses the stories become much more fascinating.

There definately was not as much closure with each of the characters as I would like. There is a lot of speculation and guessing that had to be made in order to really figure out what happened to a character. Also there is a strong charcter change in Fitzgarald from the progressing medical student who actually looked like he was progressing forward to the alchoholic who just wanted to ...more
Michelle
This book won the Giller Prize here in Canada. Which is apparently the biggest prize win here, so good on Vincent Lam. The author is an emergency physician in Toronto, and basically writes what he knows. Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures is a collection of intertwined short stories that involve some of the same characters. Considering I usually can take or leave short stories, I was quite impressed with this collection. I think it helped to have a connecting thread between them, that way you're a...more
Noel Rooks
I liked this book. Short stories, tied together by the fact that he essentially follows the same 4 doctors throughout. They're medical stories (the author is an Emergency doctor in Canada) so all the jargon and treatments ring true, but yet the medicine is secondary to the stories. Spare in style, plot driven, but literary. I tore through it to see how it ends. I was annoyed that the author felt the need to put a medical terms glossary at the end. I'm fairly sure most people know what a stethesc...more
Erin
There are some books which seriously make me question their placement on a best seller's list. This would be one of them. I t-r-i-e-d, oh how I tried, to get through this book in its entirety. I wasn't bored by it, but there was nothing keeping me hooked either... just a peek into the lives of some sorry souls somehow chained together through circumstance and the healthcare system. Thoroughly depressing and I put it down before I wasted anymore precious time with it. Given two stars purely ...more
Kharah
I was looking at the reviews for this book and they appear to be split between love and hate. Many books about doctors, I suppose, tend to have the doctor as the hero: going into crazy dangerous situations, miraculous cures against all odds, tales of strength and humanity and hope. If those are the sorts of books about doctors that you're used to, then I can totally see why this book would not be a favourite.

This book is more about the darker side of medical school and medicine. There...more
Caleigh
Short stories are not really my thing. There are only a few authors whose short stories have captivated me -- Alice Munro, Jhumpa Lahiri and Guy Vanderhaeghe, to name a few. Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is a strange combination of short stories that are linked by the relationships between the four doctors who are the main characters.

The stories were extremely well written and most of them were quite engaging. But to me, the linking of the stories just didn't work -- the links we...more
Zoran
Well, what a mess. There must have been a storyline somewhere in this book, but it got lost in the jumble of medical terms and half-baked verbal polaroids of failed attempts at CPR.

What did I take from this book? That there are way more failures than successes in emergency rooms. That doctors take deaths as a marginally important daily occurrence, and that they regard having to perform CPR as a time consuming nuisance. All the doctor-characters in the book are interconnected, but they never deve...more
Thalia
I wonder if 2006 was a slim for the picking year for the Giller Prize. Thsi nevel, in my opinion, hardly comes close to delivering that sort of quality. The language was nothing notworthy and the stories to choppy to be of any real value. I can only imagine that the medical jargon thrilled the panelists so much they forgot it was supposed to be a novel. Okay, so it wasn't horrible but just as I thought we had something the author plays a switcheroo and it takes you five pages to figure out w...more
Andrew
“Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures” well deserves its Giller Prize. It is enjoyable and illuminating. Lam has a gift for prose and the experience needed to tell the story realistically. There is no “ER” or “House” style medical drama here, only real life vignettes (some exciting, some not) that convey the human experience of being a doctor.

Much has been made of the realism of “Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures”; it is a fairly accurate depiction of a slice of life in the medical p...more
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Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures: Stories (Paperback)
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures: Stories (Hardcover)
Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures (Paperback)
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Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures: Stories (Compact Disc)

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