Internal Medicine

Starred review from May 26, 2014
Writing to make sense of his medical residency, Holt, a fiction writer (In the Valley of the Kings) and geriatric specialist at the University of North Carolina, elegantly tells a more far-reaching tale of illness and healing in nine stories. Holt narrates through the voice of a young doctor—a composite figure, as are his “patients”—beginning with the frustrating case of a woman too claustrophobic to wear an oxygen mask and too ill to be without it, whose agonizing death teaches the doctor that no singular heroics are necessary. As a mentor advised, “There was nothing to do. But at least we could have done it together.” There’s also the heartrending story of a cancer-stricken artist in hospice, whose home full of exotic birds and oil portraits offers a rare gift, and the strange yet touching story of a patient who kept forgetting his fatal diagnosis, but would light up at the “few faces in the world he can still remember.” Each exquisitely crafted and evocative tale reveals not only the power of Holt’s storytelling, but the stark realization that for doctors and patients alike, it’s our bodies that “remain the essential mystery we keep trying to solve.”