A.’s Reviews > The Best Medicine: Stories of Healing > Status Update

“The Moons of Jupiter”, Alice Munro, 10/10. An unbelievably good story—the various elements skilfully introduced and masterfully intertwined until they’re almost unbearably charged with meaning, dotted with moments of blinding wisdom and poignancy. The frame—daughter helps her father through valvular heart disease—becomes a reckoning with death and a lifetime of regrets. Munro doesn’t ever miss.

“I WillKeepHer Company”, Rhys Davies, 5/10. A old man dies with his wife in their snowy rural Welsh cottage. Lots of pointless natural descriptions. The entire first sectioncould have been cut—start with Nurse Baldock, the snowplough, the helicopter.

“Life-Line”, Robert A. Heinlein, 7/10. A pleasant satirical story about a doctor who can predict the exact moment of death and all the ensuing societal repercussions. Satirical. The only story here that addresses medical research.

“Lady With A Lamp”, Dorothy Parker, 2/10. A terrible unreliable narrator story, not very funny, the voice poorly realized.

“Amy Foster”, Joseph Conrad, 6/10. Incredibly overwrought, but the central story of a shipwrecked immigrant in a small British town, is fine. “Yanko Goorall” would have been a better title.

“Let Mw Feel Your Pulse,” O. Henry, 5/10. So much of this story depends on the voice, which falls flat. I wasn’t even expecting a twist but I got one anyway—Amaryllis! That half of the story was better.

“Swept and Garnished,” Rudyard Kipling, 6.5/10. Acute encephalopathy 2/2 viral URI in the setting of national guilt regarding tge massacre of innocent children in wartime.

“People Like That are the Only People Here,” Lorrie Moore, 10/10. Really more like 11/10. 100/10. 999/10. Quite possibly the greatest short story this country has produced. Moved me to tears. On cancer, the wrenching anguish of parenting a sick child, the cursed existence of chronic inpatient life. I swear the text here is different from other versions, but then the story is also about storytelling itself.

“I Had to Go Sick”, Julian Maclaren Ross, 7/10. A runaround through WWII military healthcare bureaucracy. Surprisingly relatable 80 years later.

“Lord Mountdrago”, W. Somerset Maugham, 7/10. A speedy, dialogue-heavy fiction involving (yawn) a psychiatrist. Dream-reality parallels are well done. Superstitious elements not fully convincing.