Critical Care

Life inside a critical care unit for those laboring to save--or rather sustain--vegetative life is so brutally and realistically presented that the listener can almost see the bright lights, the machines and the patients in their "pods." With such a compelling and engrossing novel, it's unfortunate that the narrator's tone and pace vary little. In addition, the flow of the narrative is disturbed by inappropriately long pauses. Nonetheless, the listener is carried along by the sheer momentum of the story. This piece will get great attention by word-of-mouth. S.G.B. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

February 3, 1992
The often macabre world of high-tech dying seems all too real in this provocative, sardonic first novel about an intensive care unit where terminally ill patients hooked up to machines are kept alive in impersonal surroundings at frightful expense, often against their will. Using incredibly poor judgment, sleep-deprived Dr. Peter Werner Ernst, a second-year medical resident, becomes romantically entangled with Felicia Potter, the daughter of a patient who's been in a coma for months. Felicia is an air-head fashion model and a tremendous user, whose desire to pull the plug on her father is linked to a vicious family squabble over his estate. Dooling, a lawyer who once worked as a respiratory therapist in intensive care units, makes riveting use of the legal details when cynical Dr. Ernst gets dragged into a lawsuit. Although he sometimes overdoes attempts at sexual humor and surreal phantasmagoric fantasies, his handling of the medical satire is gut-wrenchingly accurate, authentically frightening and certainly timely.