The spirit of the place

Literature and Medicine

by Samuel Shem

Notorious for its Rabelaisian comedy, and celebrated for its humanism, Samuel Shem’s The House of God was hailed as “troubling and hilarious…brutally honest” (The New York Times), a “Catch-22 with stethoscopes” (Cosmopolitan). Now in his most ambitious novel yet, Shem returns to dissect the complicated relationships between mothers and sons, ghosts and bullies, doctors and patients, the past and the present, and love and death. Settled into a relationship with an Italian yoga instructor and working in Europe, Dr. Orville Rose's peace is shaken by his mother's death.

On his return to Columbia, a Hudson River town of quirky people and “plagued by breakage,” he learns that his mother has willed him a large sum of money, her 1981 Chrysler, and her Victorian house in the center of town. There's one odd catch: he must live in her house for one year and thirteen days. As he struggles with his decision—to stay and meet the terms of the will or return to his life in Italy—Orville reconnects with family, reunites with former friends, and comes to terms with old rivals and bitter memories. In the process he’ll discover his own history, as well as his mother’s, and finally learn what it really means to be a healer, and to be healed.

Genres: Fiction, Medicine

Unknown Binding

First published June 1, 2008

About the author

Samuel Shem (b. 1944) is the pen name of the American psychiatrist Stephen Joseph Bergman. His main works are The House of God and Mount Misery, both fictional but close-to-real first-hand descriptions of the training of doctors in the United States.
Of Jewish descent, Bergman was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford in 1966, and was tutored by Denis Noble FRS, cardiac physiologist and later head of the Oxford Cardiac Electrophysiology Group. In an address to Noble's retirement party at Balliol, he related that Noble's response to Bergman's attempt to become a writer was to ply him with copious sherry. He graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Medical School.
He was an intern at Beth Israel Hospital (subsequently renamed Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) ,which inspired the book The House of God.
As of 2017, Bergman is a member of the faculty of the New York University School of Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center.
Shem's play Bill W. and Dr. Bob had an Off Broadway run at New World Stage in New York City. It ran for 132 performances and closed on June 10, 2007. The New York Times called it "an insightful new play."

Reviews

[Cathie D · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! Samuel Shem writes from his heart. As in his other books, he shows the reader the heart of medicine, why it is about caring for others, and where the system often goes so wrong. At the same time he gives us a great story to read

[Jude · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love the house of God when I read it as a student. I was hoping this book would be similar in content. However I found it to be a completely different flavor And it took a while to get over my disappointment. Eventually I did enjoy the book.

[Viviane Crystal · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a very young boy, Orville Rose senses that he is "a part of something else," a joyous cry that his mother quickly quashes with the stern response, "This is all there is." Orville runs to his room in tears and basically spends the rest of his life running away.

Now after he has served overseas as a Doctor Without Borders and seen all there is to see of suffering, disease, murder and more, he has fallen in love with an Italian woman, Celestina. His tranquility is shattered upon receiving a telegram that his mother died and it is two weeks after her death that he arrives at Columbia, a small town bordering the Hudson River in upstate New York. His mother has stymied her son Orville in two ways: First she leaves him over a million dollars which he gets only after he has lived in Columbia for a year and thirteen days. Second, she has written letters to Orville which an unknown person is mailing, per her direction, to him, letters which are notes condemning Orville for his failure to care for her adequately which he initially takes as truth and proceeds to fulfill in reality.

Orville falls in love again after Celestina dumps him for a rich man. As Orville is getting more and more disgusted with his hometown, he meets Miranda and her son Cray, who calls Orville "Orvy." Miranda is handicapped and after awhile Orville realizes how emotionally handicapped he is as well. No, this isn't a morbid book but one in which tragedy, irony, and comedy are always flowing, weaving together and insisting on their own separate, special scenes.

In reality, the tendency for all material objects in Columbia to break parallels the brokenness of its citizens. They are blind to progress and what is best for one's own well-being and therefore tend to veto and despise everything new or modern. But it takes a whole novel for the diamond in the rough to emerge in both characters and the town in which they live.

You will meet a selfless doctor, a childhood bully turned politician, a woman excelling in her physical beauty and teasing sexuality, a widow terrified to trust in love again, a boy in desperate need of a father, and more characters who immediately grip the reader's interest and don't let go.

The Spirit of the Place is fine, literate contemporary fiction about love between a mother and son, son and lover, mentors and more! Wonderful, well-written story!

[Rebecca Abbott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read 2 other books by the author and love them. Mount Misery, and House of God, are classics on the must read list for anyone interested in or in med school or for practicing docs. This book was a disappointment. Anyone looking for a book sort of like the first 2 may be disappointed as well. They were totally readable for a non medical person like me.

[Luke Johnson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately, I found this book boring and predictable with unsympathetic characters. It also read like a slow-paced Hallmark movie. This was pretty disappointing, as House of God is excellent and a classic.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writer known as Samuel Shem has a good heart and a sharp sense of humor. He is best known as a satirist. I liked this 2008 book, satire-tinged, less than I had the later (2015) At the Heart of the Universe. The author gives us a memorable and touching character in Miranda Braak. Yet I found the magical realism trying and thought the caricatures of the residents of "Columbia" [name changed to protect the innocent] and of the town itself heavy-handed. For the 1980s, roughly when this is set, the duties of a GP in the mid-Hudson Valley would not have encompassed OB-GYN, trauma surgery, bone-setting, pediatrics and internal medicine. When I was an aspiring medical student in mid-60s, working as a nurse's aide in the next hospital south from that in "Columbia," no one did all those things. The practice has a mythic quality to it.
The book goes too long, but it has a happy ending! I enjoyed it, but wanted it to wrap faster.

[Joanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

My friend, Dr. Andy Walker, recommended this book. Andy's book recommendations are usually worth investigating, so I took a look at this one and it is definitely worth reading. Orville Rose goes back to his hometown after the death of this Jewish "smother." She had a provision in her will leaving him her house, car and 50% of her substantial estate if he lives in her house (instead of moving back to Europe where he has been living for several years) for one year and 13 days. Orville's mother was "a terror at home, but a saint in public." He reluctantly agrees to stay, and the experience results in some unexpected revelations. This book is both well-written and insightful. A worthy read.

[Donald Clymer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great story but rather wordy in places.

[Sue Pack · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I found this book to be difficult to get into at first, I became very attached to some of the characters, and I found it difficult to put down!

[Literary Ventures Fund · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Spirit of the Place
Samuel Shem

'The Spirit of the Place is written with a large heart, a healing touch, wry and wise insight into the human condition. Worthy of the Best of Samuel Shem, which is worthy indeed.'
James Carroll, National Book Award Winner and author of House of War


Book Description

Samuel Shem's first novel, The House of God, the classic novel of life and death in an American hospital, has sold more then two million copies and is required reading in medical schools throughout the world. Thirty years later Shem returns with The Spirit of the Place, his most ambitious work yet. It goes beyond a focus on young doctors-in-training to that of a world-traveled doctor called home in the early '80s to become the doctor to the small town he ran away from, to face his own history and that of the town itself. A novel of love and death, mothers and sons, ghosts and bullies, doctors and patients, illness and healing, The Spirit of the Place spins a tale of universal human experience and the changing life of a small town with genuine warmth and humor.

After a divorce and a year of wandering the world with "Doctors Without Borders," Orville Rose has settled into a new love with a beautiful Italian spiritual teacher. A telegram informs him that his mother has died. He returns to Columbia, "a Hudson River town plagued by breakage," and the startling terms of his mother's will. She has left him an enormous sum of money and her historic home, but there's a catch: he must live in her house on the Courthouse Square continuously for a year and thirteen days before he can collect. But that's hardly what Orville had in mind. As he struggles with the decision and its aftermath an entire set of unimagined events and personal transformations—both hilarious and poignant—occur.

Spirit shows Shem at his finest—compassionate, capacious, funny, full of big ideas and memorable personalities. It offers an authentic, unvarnished portrait of the medical profession and underscores the crucial link between the health of individuals and the health of communities at a pivotal period of American history.

[David Edmonds]

Samuel Shem's The Spirit of the Place is the story of Orville Rose, who is forced to leave Europe and live in his mother's home after her death by the bequest of her will; he is to live in the house for 1 year and 13 days in order to receive his inheritance. I am assuming that it is his mother's idea that after that much time, he will settle down and stop running from the things in his life that make him unhappy.

I tried to finish this book. I even went beyond my 100 page mark, even though the I did not care what happened with the sometimes overly clichéd story or to the sometimes overly stereotyped characters (if by 100 pages, it hasn't entirely grabbed my attention yet, I'm done with it - there are far more books on my shelf that warrant reading at that point). I waded through overbearing remarks on how a man is only happy with a family that included a child; an overbearing over-Jewish mother who seems to find it necessary to bring guilt on her son even after death, through "mysterious" letters written to him from beyond the grave, and then also haunting him as a ghost; constant reminders for what a poor excuse for a town Columbia is. I can't decide if Samuel Shem is writing a love story or some sort of medical story steeped in magical realism.

I was willing to give this all a try until the "explosion." We've all read the story in our emails, of the drunken fishermen using dynamite to break a hole in the ice; the dog fetching the stick of dynamite and bringing it back to the stunned fishermen, only to have it then explode. Fun little story to be emailed back and forth ad nauseam, right? Well, apparently Samuel Shem thinks this is worthy of placing in his novel, as well. At that point, I'm through with the story. If he can't come up with a plausible type of tragedy on his own, that he has to resort to ridiculous emailed urban legends and pass them off as his own, then I don't see much hope for the rest of the book.

[Marvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extraordinarily well-written novel about a 39-year-old doctor who, upon his mother's death, returns to his home town, a decaying Hudson River community in upstate New York, and is compelled by the terms of his mother's will to stay for a year. This is no nostalgic homecoming; the town's many shortcomings, failures, & "breakages" are elaborated--and exaggerated--in detail, and they are what represent "the spirit of the place." Despite the extraordinary writing and the interesting characters, this was pretty melancholy for my taste, even though, in the end, it amounts to an affirmation of the importance of community even when that community disappoints us & causes suffering.

[Bruce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because James Fallows recommended it on his blog. I read to the end because of the characters. I didn't mind that not every mystery was solved, not every misunderstanding was set right. That's how it is in real life. The sense of breakage in place, people, and relationships was delicately interweaved. All the famous people connected to the city of Columbia, New York -- especially the contemporary ones like Ollie North -- gave me a fact checking itch, but not enough to scratch. The ending was perfect.

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid novel about a wandering expatriate doctor who is forced to live in his childhood home in his small New England home for one year and 13 days by the terms of his mother's will. As you might expect, he has to face some truths about his family and himself while he is waiting for his inheritance. The best parts are the doctoring bits, which I assume are relatively truthful since Shem (the pen name of Stephen Bergman) is actually a member of the Harvard Medical School faculty.

[Dan Burke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deeply moving examination of life and how we view it.The story explores how we approach our lives, measure our successes, and examine the constant trade offs we continually negotiate as we search and stuggle to make sense of our lives. Samuel Shem takes us on a search, entertaining, but so much deeper, leading to self examination of what we each find truly important in life. Intelligently written and masterfully done!!!

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Orville Rose has spent his whole life running away from the people and places that make him feel uncomfortable. Now his mother is dead and as a condition of her will she wants him to stay - for a year and 13 days in his childhood home. The Spirit of the Place follows Orville through the ups and downs of those 378 days as he tries to find a place for himself in the town where he grew up.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

REALLY predictable - no surprises in this book. Still, I finished it, which says something. It was like watching a movie when you've already read the book first. You know the ending already, but you want to enjoy seeing the plot get there. Pretty good overall.

[David S. Grauman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Solid fair

The author's first book was a masterpiece. The second, interesting. This was just a novel. Time spent reading it was not wasted, but could have been spent better elsewhere.

[Melissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't get past chapter 1 - it really does not catch my interest (plus I have advance copy).

[Susan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not shaping up too great.

[Sarka Kysilkova · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bohužel nejslabší kniha od S. Shema.