What do you think?
Rate this book
A History of the Present Illness: Stories
A History of the Present Illness takes readers into overlooked lives in the neighborhoods, hospitals, and nursing homes of San Francisco, offering a deeply humane and incisive portrait of health and illness in America today. An elderly Chinese immigrant sacrifices his demented wife's well-being to his son's authority. A busy Latina physician's eldest daughter's need for more attention has disastrous consequences. A young veteran's injuries become a metaphor for the rest of his life. A gay doctor learns very different lessons about family from his life and his work, and a psychiatrist who advocates for the underserved may herself be crazy. Together, these honest and compassionate stories introduce a striking new literary voice and provide a view of what it means to be a doctor and a patient unlike anything we've read before.
In the tradition of Oliver Sacks and Abraham Verghese, Aronson's writing is based on personal experience and addresses topics of current social relevance. Masterfully told, A History of the Present Illness explores the role of stories in medicine and creates a world pulsating with life, speaking truths about what makes us human.
259 pages, Hardcover
First published January 22, 2013
65 people are currently reading
1586 people want to read
About the author
Louise Aronson
5 books129 followersLouise Aronson is a writer, leading geriatrician, educator, professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and the author of the New York Times bestseller Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, and Reimagining Life. A graduate of Harvard Medical School and the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, Dr. Aronson has received the Gold Professorship in Humanism in Medicine, the California Homecare Physician of the Year award, and the American Geriatrics Society Clinician-Teacher of the Year award. Her writing appears in publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, Discover Magazine, JAMA, Bellevue Literary Review and the New England Journal of Medicine and has earned her four Pushcart nominations, the Sonora Review Prize, and a MacDowell fellowship. Her work has been featured on TODAY, CBS This Morning, NPR’s Fresh Air, Politico, LitHub, Kaiser Health News, and Tech Nation.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
March 16, 2013
I loved this book. The stories are marvelous. They’re exceptional. They’re incredibly deftly written. Each story is a gem, as is the entire narrative.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed the book, it wasn’t a comfort read for me. In fact, all my hypochondriac tendencies and fears about my future health status were activated, but I loved the stories anyway, despite feeling sad, infuriated, and especially really scared at times while reading. It greatly helped that the compassionate nature of the writer continually shines through the pages.
I haven’t enjoyed a short story book as much since I read How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer. Although I’ve always enjoyed reading essays, but my usual preference is to read novels and full-length non-fiction books rather than short stories and books of short stories. However, these are intersecting stories, with characters that sometimes make appearances in different stories. The stories also somehow feel as if they’re part of one story, and in general they do follow a timeline, from young to old, from students to experienced medical doctors. The whole thing worked really well. I thought the stories fit together so well even before I got to the last story, and that last story solidified the job of tying all the stories together.
These stories are published as fiction but all along they read as truth to me, and the last story makes clear that each does have a huge non-fiction component. That’s why this book is on so many of my apparently contradictory shelves.
I love the quote that starts the book: “If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth.” (It’s by Tim O’Brien from How to Tell a War Story. I can’t find that book at Goodreads but I probably wouldn’t add it to my favorite quotes anyway, even though I really like the quote and it definitely fits this book.) One of my big quibbles with medicine, ever since I was aware, from eleven years old on, is the dishonestly. When it comes to medical matters I value honesty above all else. (I recently took a continuing education class about end of life care and was tempted to write a long rant in the feedback section to their contention that what is most important when treating a patient is hope. Not for myself it isn’t; it’s honesty.) I appreciate that she has worked in palliative care.
I loved the San Francisco settings. I could identify most of them and am familiar with some of them. I always enjoy books that I can put on my san-francisco shelf. This book makes wonderful use of the city, its medical facilities but also many other places.
I really appreciated how skillfully the relationships and communications and miscommunications were explored, from cross-cultural, to supervisor-supervisee, doctor-patient, between lovers and between friends, between group members, etc.
As I read these stories I couldn’t help but be aware of the following of my feelings/beliefs: Don't get sick. Don't get disabled. Don't get old if not in perfect health, and be wealthy, not poor. And perhaps: Don’t go into medicine, or be careful it’s your true calling if you do. I have physicians in my family and I’ve watched many in the process of dying, so I’d already thought a great deal about these matters, but reading this book has caused enough of a shift that I think I’ll be looking at death & dying and doctor-patient relationships slightly differently.
I’m always impressed by and frequently enjoy writing by physicians. On the back inside cover of the book, in the bio section, it says that “She is an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she cares for older patients and directs the Northern California Geriatric Education Center and UCSF Medical Humanities.” She probably couldn’t have written this exact book without her medical training and practice, but it reads as a book written by a true writer, and I hope she writes and publishes more work. I’ll read it if she does.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed the book, it wasn’t a comfort read for me. In fact, all my hypochondriac tendencies and fears about my future health status were activated, but I loved the stories anyway, despite feeling sad, infuriated, and especially really scared at times while reading. It greatly helped that the compassionate nature of the writer continually shines through the pages.
I haven’t enjoyed a short story book as much since I read How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer. Although I’ve always enjoyed reading essays, but my usual preference is to read novels and full-length non-fiction books rather than short stories and books of short stories. However, these are intersecting stories, with characters that sometimes make appearances in different stories. The stories also somehow feel as if they’re part of one story, and in general they do follow a timeline, from young to old, from students to experienced medical doctors. The whole thing worked really well. I thought the stories fit together so well even before I got to the last story, and that last story solidified the job of tying all the stories together.
These stories are published as fiction but all along they read as truth to me, and the last story makes clear that each does have a huge non-fiction component. That’s why this book is on so many of my apparently contradictory shelves.
I love the quote that starts the book: “If you don’t care for obscenity, you don’t care for the truth.” (It’s by Tim O’Brien from How to Tell a War Story. I can’t find that book at Goodreads but I probably wouldn’t add it to my favorite quotes anyway, even though I really like the quote and it definitely fits this book.) One of my big quibbles with medicine, ever since I was aware, from eleven years old on, is the dishonestly. When it comes to medical matters I value honesty above all else. (I recently took a continuing education class about end of life care and was tempted to write a long rant in the feedback section to their contention that what is most important when treating a patient is hope. Not for myself it isn’t; it’s honesty.) I appreciate that she has worked in palliative care.
I loved the San Francisco settings. I could identify most of them and am familiar with some of them. I always enjoy books that I can put on my san-francisco shelf. This book makes wonderful use of the city, its medical facilities but also many other places.
I really appreciated how skillfully the relationships and communications and miscommunications were explored, from cross-cultural, to supervisor-supervisee, doctor-patient, between lovers and between friends, between group members, etc.
As I read these stories I couldn’t help but be aware of the following of my feelings/beliefs: Don't get sick. Don't get disabled. Don't get old if not in perfect health, and be wealthy, not poor. And perhaps: Don’t go into medicine, or be careful it’s your true calling if you do. I have physicians in my family and I’ve watched many in the process of dying, so I’d already thought a great deal about these matters, but reading this book has caused enough of a shift that I think I’ll be looking at death & dying and doctor-patient relationships slightly differently.
I’m always impressed by and frequently enjoy writing by physicians. On the back inside cover of the book, in the bio section, it says that “She is an associate professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she cares for older patients and directs the Northern California Geriatric Education Center and UCSF Medical Humanities.” She probably couldn’t have written this exact book without her medical training and practice, but it reads as a book written by a true writer, and I hope she writes and publishes more work. I’ll read it if she does.
October 10, 2012
this author makes me so jealous/envious -- harvard MD. AND MFA. AND she lives in san francisco!? AND is generally awesome and wins writing prizes!? *sigh*
Louise Aronson has an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MD from Harvard. She has received the Sonora Review prize, the New Millennium short fiction award, and three Pushcart nominations. Her fiction has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review and the Literary Review, among other publications. She is an associate professor of medicine at UCSF, where she cares for older patients and directs the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center and UCSF Medical Humanities. She lives in San Francisco.
i am feeling professionally inadequate! :)
this book really resonated with me -- though i found it hard at moments to separate the fiction from the fact - wondering often what was real and what was made-up? the style of the telling very much lends itself to just hearing a doctor speak about cases/people she has known.
this collection of short stories is really wonderful. Aronson writes in a way that complex emotions and ideas are addressed via memorable characters and tight prose.
Louise Aronson has an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MD from Harvard. She has received the Sonora Review prize, the New Millennium short fiction award, and three Pushcart nominations. Her fiction has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review and the Literary Review, among other publications. She is an associate professor of medicine at UCSF, where she cares for older patients and directs the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center and UCSF Medical Humanities. She lives in San Francisco.
i am feeling professionally inadequate! :)
this book really resonated with me -- though i found it hard at moments to separate the fiction from the fact - wondering often what was real and what was made-up? the style of the telling very much lends itself to just hearing a doctor speak about cases/people she has known.
this collection of short stories is really wonderful. Aronson writes in a way that complex emotions and ideas are addressed via memorable characters and tight prose.
July 14, 2013
"History of the Present Illness" is a superb story collection. This is not the standard medical memoir: "here's what happened to me in the ER today." No, this is spell-binding fiction a la John Cheever or Alice Munroe. The stories are surprising, eclectic, engaging, and edifying. The characters are fully drawn and so alive on the page. There is not another book like this in the literary medical world. Once you start it, you will not put it down. Easily once of the best books I've read in a long time.
October 25, 2012
Aronson is an MD who completed the strenuous Warren Wilson part-time MFA program; she is a close observer of the human condition, empathetic without drama, perceptive to an almost painful degree.
All the stories in this collection (her first publication) grow out of the experiences of patients, families of patients, medical caregivers and their families. Others have done this -- and done it well -- but Aronson's work stands out specifically for the insight into the lives of women who take up medicine. Even when the main character is male, there is a female psychiatrist not very far in the background who is the lynchpin in his story ("Giving Good Death,"). I especially liked "Blurred Boundary Disorder," which takes the form of a frenzied, footnote-riddled letter to a female physician's superiors. She is determined to change her own history, and to do so by forcing new terms for her own symptoms into the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. It is a challenging story to read, but it may also the most interesting picture I have ever had of the inner workings of a psychiatrist's mind.
Aronson is full of compassion and at the same time, she dissects with ruthless efficiency. Her skill is in isolating the clearest, most revealing details and serving them up without sugar-coating. I have rated this four stars out of five, simply because collections of short stories are much harder to pull off, and there are a few uneven entries.
All the stories in this collection (her first publication) grow out of the experiences of patients, families of patients, medical caregivers and their families. Others have done this -- and done it well -- but Aronson's work stands out specifically for the insight into the lives of women who take up medicine. Even when the main character is male, there is a female psychiatrist not very far in the background who is the lynchpin in his story ("Giving Good Death,"). I especially liked "Blurred Boundary Disorder," which takes the form of a frenzied, footnote-riddled letter to a female physician's superiors. She is determined to change her own history, and to do so by forcing new terms for her own symptoms into the Merck Manual of Diagnosis and Therapy. It is a challenging story to read, but it may also the most interesting picture I have ever had of the inner workings of a psychiatrist's mind.
Aronson is full of compassion and at the same time, she dissects with ruthless efficiency. Her skill is in isolating the clearest, most revealing details and serving them up without sugar-coating. I have rated this four stars out of five, simply because collections of short stories are much harder to pull off, and there are a few uneven entries.
December 29, 2012
See my full review here: http://booksaremyfavouriteandbest.wor...
I’ve got a couple of friends who are nurses and doctors. Two have them have worked in the emergency department of a major city hospital in Melbourne. They have the BEST dinner party stories.
I wonder if Louise Aronson, a doctor and an author, wrote A History of the Present Illness at the prompting of her friends? Maybe not – her collection of interlinked short stories are a brilliant mix of the delicate, hard-hitting, personal and coolly remote – not dinner party conversation fodder at all.
Before the recent, terrible event in Sandy Hook in the US, Obama’s reforms to the American health system were filtering through to the news broadcast in Australia. Gun control may take over policy debate within the forseeable future however the issues in the existing healthcare system will still be festering away. When I look at pop-culture takes on the US healthcare system that have influenced (and to a certain extent informed) me over the past decade it comes down to three things – Mike Moore’s documentary, Sicko; Lionel Schriver’s novel, So Much For That (and an accompanying author talk that I attended); and my guilty television pleasure, Grey’s Anatomy. So I’m hardly qualified for judging whether Aronson’s collection of stories are a fair reflection of US healthcare. Instead, I put judgement aside and enjoyed each story for what it was – a heartfelt snapshot of men, women and children in the neighborhoods, hospitals and nursing homes of San Francisco.
All of the sixteen stories are little lessons in compassion with Aronson swinging the reader from the perspective of doctor, to patient, to on-looking family member. Some stories are told in the first person, others in the third. Some are lush, detailed and sentimental whilst others are stark, clinical. Despite the obvious changes in creative writing style between the stories, there are subtle links between each and the overall result is impressive.
There are no weak spots in this collection. From the first story, a man talking about his day-in-day-out visits with his wife who is in a nursing home after suffering a stroke -
“It’s much like caring for a baby, he explains to his daughter, except without the sweet smells, without the hope.”
- to the heart-wrenching story of a little girl with a bed-wetting problem and a young man dying without family by his side -
“The nursing notes in his chart said that Jake’s family never visited… It was impossible to look at Jake’s torso and not think plague and curse and infestation and death. But it was equally impossible to imagine how people could stop seeing, touching, and loving their son.”
I started the last story in the collection not realising that it is the author’s story. It offers some nice insights into her work as both a doctor and as an author and how each role informs the other.
“In medicine, the ‘history of the present illness’, or HPI, is the critical first portion of the medical note that describes the onset, duration, character, context, and severity of the illness. Basically, it’s the story, and without it, you can’t understand what’s going on with your patient.”
4/5 A memorable collection of stories.
My copy of A History of the Present Illness was courtesy of Bloomsbury.
I’ve got a couple of friends who are nurses and doctors. Two have them have worked in the emergency department of a major city hospital in Melbourne. They have the BEST dinner party stories.
I wonder if Louise Aronson, a doctor and an author, wrote A History of the Present Illness at the prompting of her friends? Maybe not – her collection of interlinked short stories are a brilliant mix of the delicate, hard-hitting, personal and coolly remote – not dinner party conversation fodder at all.
Before the recent, terrible event in Sandy Hook in the US, Obama’s reforms to the American health system were filtering through to the news broadcast in Australia. Gun control may take over policy debate within the forseeable future however the issues in the existing healthcare system will still be festering away. When I look at pop-culture takes on the US healthcare system that have influenced (and to a certain extent informed) me over the past decade it comes down to three things – Mike Moore’s documentary, Sicko; Lionel Schriver’s novel, So Much For That (and an accompanying author talk that I attended); and my guilty television pleasure, Grey’s Anatomy. So I’m hardly qualified for judging whether Aronson’s collection of stories are a fair reflection of US healthcare. Instead, I put judgement aside and enjoyed each story for what it was – a heartfelt snapshot of men, women and children in the neighborhoods, hospitals and nursing homes of San Francisco.
All of the sixteen stories are little lessons in compassion with Aronson swinging the reader from the perspective of doctor, to patient, to on-looking family member. Some stories are told in the first person, others in the third. Some are lush, detailed and sentimental whilst others are stark, clinical. Despite the obvious changes in creative writing style between the stories, there are subtle links between each and the overall result is impressive.
There are no weak spots in this collection. From the first story, a man talking about his day-in-day-out visits with his wife who is in a nursing home after suffering a stroke -
“It’s much like caring for a baby, he explains to his daughter, except without the sweet smells, without the hope.”
- to the heart-wrenching story of a little girl with a bed-wetting problem and a young man dying without family by his side -
“The nursing notes in his chart said that Jake’s family never visited… It was impossible to look at Jake’s torso and not think plague and curse and infestation and death. But it was equally impossible to imagine how people could stop seeing, touching, and loving their son.”
I started the last story in the collection not realising that it is the author’s story. It offers some nice insights into her work as both a doctor and as an author and how each role informs the other.
“In medicine, the ‘history of the present illness’, or HPI, is the critical first portion of the medical note that describes the onset, duration, character, context, and severity of the illness. Basically, it’s the story, and without it, you can’t understand what’s going on with your patient.”
4/5 A memorable collection of stories.
My copy of A History of the Present Illness was courtesy of Bloomsbury.
December 5, 2012
Every one of the sixteen short stories in this interlocked collection is an exquisitely etched jewel. Set in the SF Bay area in various medical care facilities they bring us characters experiencing health crisis and their families and care givers with the aggregate effect shining a spotlight on the state of the American health care industry.
Every story is unique, varying in style, tone, length, voice, tempo and form. From the intergenerational family (made-for-TV-move?) drama in 'Heart Failure', to the list of facts in '25 Things I Know About My Mother-in-Law', to the heavily (neurotically?) footnoted memo sent by one psychiatrist to the psychiatrists chairing the panel working on the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders advocating for inclusion of a new subset of boundary disorders in 'Blurred Boundary Disorder' and whether attempting the objectivity of a camera in 'Snapshots from an Institution' or the intimate inner experience of an Iraq vet amputee in 'After' or the unreliable narrator in 'Lucky You' Aronson's stories open our heart and consciousness to the human condition and the modern surrealistic state of affairs in America's medical care institutions.
as posted at Joystory
By drawing her characters with such observational skill and empathy she gives us back the original meaning of the word 'caring' currently so distorted by the mechanized, bureaucratized, politicized, and profitized health care industry. This book should be required reading for every first year med student and every legislator at both state and federal level. The stories in this book and stories like them should become the underpinning of any further national discussion about health care legislation.
My favorite story is probably the last one, 'A Medical Story', which is itself a musing on the definition of 'story' and blurs the boundaries between story narrator and author and confesses the origin of all the stories in actual events lived or learned of by the author. This also blurs the boundaries between genre making it hard to place the book solidly in either the NF or fiction categories since only names and certain details were changed to protect the privacy of families and individuals. And yet tho rooted solidly in actual events these stories are crafted like literary stories designed to elicit that inner 'ah' of awe and the collection arranged to emphasize their meaning--a meaning that cannot be stated any more succinctly. By taking these true stories and climbing into the hearts and heads of their actors with her informed imagination and arranging the action to emphasize meaning Aronson gives us fiction that is truer than fact and stories that will live in our hearts and inform our conscience.
Every story is unique, varying in style, tone, length, voice, tempo and form. From the intergenerational family (made-for-TV-move?) drama in 'Heart Failure', to the list of facts in '25 Things I Know About My Mother-in-Law', to the heavily (neurotically?) footnoted memo sent by one psychiatrist to the psychiatrists chairing the panel working on the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders advocating for inclusion of a new subset of boundary disorders in 'Blurred Boundary Disorder' and whether attempting the objectivity of a camera in 'Snapshots from an Institution' or the intimate inner experience of an Iraq vet amputee in 'After' or the unreliable narrator in 'Lucky You' Aronson's stories open our heart and consciousness to the human condition and the modern surrealistic state of affairs in America's medical care institutions.
as posted at Joystory
By drawing her characters with such observational skill and empathy she gives us back the original meaning of the word 'caring' currently so distorted by the mechanized, bureaucratized, politicized, and profitized health care industry. This book should be required reading for every first year med student and every legislator at both state and federal level. The stories in this book and stories like them should become the underpinning of any further national discussion about health care legislation.
My favorite story is probably the last one, 'A Medical Story', which is itself a musing on the definition of 'story' and blurs the boundaries between story narrator and author and confesses the origin of all the stories in actual events lived or learned of by the author. This also blurs the boundaries between genre making it hard to place the book solidly in either the NF or fiction categories since only names and certain details were changed to protect the privacy of families and individuals. And yet tho rooted solidly in actual events these stories are crafted like literary stories designed to elicit that inner 'ah' of awe and the collection arranged to emphasize their meaning--a meaning that cannot be stated any more succinctly. By taking these true stories and climbing into the hearts and heads of their actors with her informed imagination and arranging the action to emphasize meaning Aronson gives us fiction that is truer than fact and stories that will live in our hearts and inform our conscience.
March 28, 2017
A wonderful and nuanced collection of (fictional) short stories about a variety of doctors and their patients, exploring physicians' motivations for entering medical school and for some--leaving it, selecting a specialty, the demands, the decisions and the consequences that characterize a life in medicine. A number of the stories focus on the plight of the elderly and end-of-life care. Highly recommended. I hope Dr. Arsonson will write more!
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a digital copy of this book for review purposes.
Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a digital copy of this book for review purposes.
October 14, 2013
Such a beautiful work of literature and social commentary, without heavy handed moralizing. One is left to ponder many sides of complex issues around illness and medicine in an American city.
August 1, 2020
This book is probably worth more than three stars, but it is only partly my genre (books by doctors about doctoring). Its main genre (mainstream literary fiction) doesn't generally do much for me.
I did think the story "Blurred Boundary Disorder" was hilarious. I hope it was supposed to be!
The last story, "A Medical Story," is nonfiction, though it took I wasn't sure of that for several pages. And it mentioned the characters in the previous story, so maybe that was nonfiction too.
In that last, nonfiction story, the author's husband tells her "...forget the fancy footwork and ironic remove, and just tell the damn story!" I assume she followed that writing advice to some extent, and it probably made the book more palatable to me.
I did think the story "Blurred Boundary Disorder" was hilarious. I hope it was supposed to be!
The last story, "A Medical Story," is nonfiction, though it took I wasn't sure of that for several pages. And it mentioned the characters in the previous story, so maybe that was nonfiction too.
In that last, nonfiction story, the author's husband tells her "...forget the fancy footwork and ironic remove, and just tell the damn story!" I assume she followed that writing advice to some extent, and it probably made the book more palatable to me.
January 9, 2021
A strong collection of short stories that I liked much better than Aronson's more recent nonfiction book, Elderhood. My one critique is that these short stories had the MFA program feel.
January 22, 2013
“In medicine, the ‘history of the present illness’, or HPI, is the critical first portion of the medical note that describes the onset, duration, character, context, and severity of the illness. Basically, it’s the story, and without it, you can’t understand what’s going on with your patient.”
A History of the Present Illness is an extraordinary collection of peripherally linked vignettes that explore the current practice and experience of health care in America.
Insightful, honest and compassionate, Aronson, an accomplished practicing physician overlays truth with fiction to illustrate the plight of her colleagues, patients and families as they navigate bureaucracy and illness. Clinical objectivity blurs with humane compassion, triumph with heartbreak in stories of complex, emotional and medical crisis.
There are sixteen stories that cross the boundaries of race, age and gender. Each give a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people within the health care system. Patients like Rodney Brown whose leg aches even though he left it in the desert sand of Afghanistan (After) and doctors like Robert who witness the obscenity of slow death and and are expected to do nothing (Giving Good Death). I found 'An Amercian Problem' almost unbearably sad, it is an indictment of a society who has relinquished the care of its most vulnerable members in favour of balancing the budget, and 'Soup or Sex?' an incredibly touching portrait of a young man fighting with uncommon bravery to be more than his disease. All of the anecdotes are affecting however, inspiring hope and admiration as often as anger and disgust.
A History of The Present Illness is a remarkable read, quietly attesting to the triumphs and failures of the American health care system. Forget what you think you know of medicine from watching Grey's Anatomy or General Hospital. In real life, caring for people is much messier than either show can portray.
Just a note: There was a problem with the formatting of my Kindle ARC edition that I hope is not present in the finished version. Aside from broken sentences, there were no clear separators between the stories and I was thrown a number of times by suddenly finding myself in the midst of a new story. The formatting issues also made 'Blurred Boundary Disorder' particularly difficult to read.
January 18, 2013
I admire short fiction writers. I do not admire any books set in hospitals, because hospitals make me queasy. That said, I enjoyed this book very much, set in several hospitals of San Francisco, all playing into my queasiness.
I think it's the tone that does it. The people in the different stories belong to various social strata/race/health. Aronson gives them all their own voice, while still keeping her narrative tone. She brings her own experience as a doctor, and she personalizes the people to more than just cases. Some stories are of doctors, who are presented as layered, complex people but also very human at the same time. Some of my favorite stories were of the doctors - Blurred Boundary Disorder: A footnoted thesis on what the author calls Blurred Boundary Disorder and that she says she has, which in a fashion caused her downfall (she's suspended from practicing); Lucky You: An ex-doctor (there is such a thing) wastes precious minutes before helping a young boy after a massive fall; and of course, the most interesting one, A Medical Story: which Louise Aronson's story, of where she got her stories.
Recommended, especially for fans of medical fiction.
I received a copy of this book via NetGalley
I think it's the tone that does it. The people in the different stories belong to various social strata/race/health. Aronson gives them all their own voice, while still keeping her narrative tone. She brings her own experience as a doctor, and she personalizes the people to more than just cases. Some stories are of doctors, who are presented as layered, complex people but also very human at the same time. Some of my favorite stories were of the doctors - Blurred Boundary Disorder: A footnoted thesis on what the author calls Blurred Boundary Disorder and that she says she has, which in a fashion caused her downfall (she's suspended from practicing); Lucky You: An ex-doctor (there is such a thing) wastes precious minutes before helping a young boy after a massive fall; and of course, the most interesting one, A Medical Story: which Louise Aronson's story, of where she got her stories.
Recommended, especially for fans of medical fiction.
I received a copy of this book via NetGalley
November 3, 2013
Medically themed short stories, some loosely interrelated, written by a physician. Pretty readable. One story told from the point of view of a woman from the start of medical school was the best account of the kind of relationship that blossoms and dies in the pressure cooker of training that I've ever read. Another story in a more experimental format about a troubled child missed the mark. Is it easiest for doctors to empathize with other doctors? I did not find enough momentum to finish this before returning to the library.
January 2, 2013
3.5 What a fantastic journey through the medical facilities and nursing homes of San Francisco. Immigrants, the doctors themselves, psychiatrists, their families and wives are all represented in these incredible, related
stories. The characters are everyday people, the prose is very readable and they are all very pertinent in today's medical trials and travails. Enjoyed these short stories very much. ARC from NetGalley.
stories. The characters are everyday people, the prose is very readable and they are all very pertinent in today's medical trials and travails. Enjoyed these short stories very much. ARC from NetGalley.
February 13, 2013
I won this through goodreads first reads and I couldn't wait to get it in the mail.
I found "A History of The Present Illness" a remarkable read, showing the triumphs and failures of the American health care system through amazing writing.
This is a MUST READ BOOK
I found "A History of The Present Illness" a remarkable read, showing the triumphs and failures of the American health care system through amazing writing.
This is a MUST READ BOOK
March 2, 2013
Collection of interlinked short stories that I enjoyed very much. They are all set in San Francisco and all focus on medical issues, usually from the point of view of a physician.
February 6, 2017
Review of A History of the Present Illness by Louise Aronson
By Celeste Rousselot
7 January 2017
Louise Aronson, MD has delivered a book of fascinating stories about patients and their physicians that are both true (with a capital T) and fictional. In other words, they really happened to her, her patients, their families, or other MD’s, but the names and some situations have been changed to protect privacy. As Dr. Aronson writes,
“Within weeks of completing my medical training, I began taking writing classes from talented and dedicated writer-teachers…at the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.
“…For some people in medicine, fiction writing is a foreign and questionable activity. I have been fortunate to work for people whose open minds and flexibility allowed me to take on a second career not only without compromising my medical career but in a way that enriched both.”
Elsewhere in the book, Dr. Aronson states,
“Of course, what most doctors call stories aren’t really stories at all. They’re anecdotes, which my Webster’s dictionary tells me are ‘usu. short narrative(s) of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident.’”
“Though I couldn’t have articulated it correctly at the time, what inspired me most in medicine was the opportunity to go beyond everyday exposition to life’s trigger problems and rising action, its culminations, turning points, and denouements.”
“…In contrast to anecdote, story—at least in the literary sense—offers so much more: narrative arc, movement, unification of action, irrevocable change. Meaning.”
All in all, I believe Dr. Aronson has admirably fulfilled her desire to present the meaningful part of medicine through moving literary stories without compromising her medically scientific sensibilities. I highly recommend A History of the Present Illness. Those involved in medicine, either as MD's or other paramedical personnel, will probably get even more out the stories because they have experienced similar episodes during their time with patients and in their pre-clinical and clinical years as students of medicine.
By Celeste Rousselot
7 January 2017
Louise Aronson, MD has delivered a book of fascinating stories about patients and their physicians that are both true (with a capital T) and fictional. In other words, they really happened to her, her patients, their families, or other MD’s, but the names and some situations have been changed to protect privacy. As Dr. Aronson writes,
“Within weeks of completing my medical training, I began taking writing classes from talented and dedicated writer-teachers…at the Warren Wilson Program for Writers.
“…For some people in medicine, fiction writing is a foreign and questionable activity. I have been fortunate to work for people whose open minds and flexibility allowed me to take on a second career not only without compromising my medical career but in a way that enriched both.”
Elsewhere in the book, Dr. Aronson states,
“Of course, what most doctors call stories aren’t really stories at all. They’re anecdotes, which my Webster’s dictionary tells me are ‘usu. short narrative(s) of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident.’”
“Though I couldn’t have articulated it correctly at the time, what inspired me most in medicine was the opportunity to go beyond everyday exposition to life’s trigger problems and rising action, its culminations, turning points, and denouements.”
“…In contrast to anecdote, story—at least in the literary sense—offers so much more: narrative arc, movement, unification of action, irrevocable change. Meaning.”
All in all, I believe Dr. Aronson has admirably fulfilled her desire to present the meaningful part of medicine through moving literary stories without compromising her medically scientific sensibilities. I highly recommend A History of the Present Illness. Those involved in medicine, either as MD's or other paramedical personnel, will probably get even more out the stories because they have experienced similar episodes during their time with patients and in their pre-clinical and clinical years as students of medicine.
June 22, 2017
I started the book this morning, and I couldn't put it down until it was over. It was a gripping collection of moments that featured both patients and providers. I love how they were loosely connected through both themes and characters. The format of each chapter varied, but the stories were all raw and honest and poignant and beautifully written. I especially loved this because it's set in San Francisco, and I'll be starting my own medical studies at UCSF soon, so it felt like I was getting an inside sneak peek into what I might see later down the road. I loved how she found beauty and meaning in these accounts that may not seem to have much at first, and it's definitely a book I'll return to read. Highly recommended for anyone- you definitely don't need a medical background to appreciate it!
November 19, 2017
How can one person be so talented? Both a medical doctor and an accomplished author, Aronson uses her experience to create fictional(?) short stories that revolve around patients and doctors, their relationships and inner struggles. Most of the stories are very engaging, though I didn’t enjoy the experimental entries quite as much (told through lists, a letter with extensive footnotes and short episodes that flip between perspectives). A for artistic creativity, though!
If you’re looking for an uplifting read, however, you won’t find it here. On to something a bit lighter...
If you’re looking for an uplifting read, however, you won’t find it here. On to something a bit lighter...
July 27, 2023
Amazing book. Completely provides a new perspective on what being a doctor is truly like and the emotional toil it can take on a person. I left only 4 stars due to some of the stories feeling a bit incomplete, and confusion between characters in each one, though that could have very well been intentional. Wish the stories were a tad bit more emotional, I expected this to be a book I was crying through, but overall, a great read.
July 10, 2017
Very interesting and insightful anecdotes from patient, family, and physician perspectives. Several left me wanting resolution, which I suppose was the idea. Would definitely recommend for those in medical school (or interested in medicine) or anyone who wants more insight into some of the personalities and intersections between doctors and the communities they serve.
Read
September 14, 2023While I was looking for insight into the current medical training I found her dysfunctional family and her illness made more of an impact as I was reading it. The author is a first year medical student and suffers the peculiarities of a NY Medical School and her classmates/professors. It is such a short book that I may reread to go back after what I was seeking.
June 28, 2019
Grim, minutely detailed look inside hospitals like SF General from the viewpoints of doctors and patients. Although this is a series of short stories, it reads like dramatic non-fiction. Authentic from an author who has an MFA in fiction and an MD from Harvard.
January 16, 2020
I think I gave it a pretty fair chance. Pushed myself to page 137, then said life is too short to endure anymore of this trash! It's getting worse not better. Return to library .
July 25, 2020
Most of the stories made me sad and worried.
March 23, 2021
Super fast, an eye-opening view into the gritty life of a doctor. I enjoyed Ms. Aronson's writing style - to the point, a cold clinical perspective with a wisp of emotion.
January 9, 2023
The writing is so choppy and hard to follow…
February 9, 2025
3.75 stars
Enjoyed this. It made me feel a bit sad, and frightened, at times. What we all have in common, an eventual end. I could never work in the medical field.
Enjoyed this. It made me feel a bit sad, and frightened, at times. What we all have in common, an eventual end. I could never work in the medical field.
March 11, 2025
Unique medical perspective written from multiple points of view as a patient, caregiver, provider etc. probably not well understood if not in the crux of being in healthcare, but I really enjoyed.
May 7, 2025
I’m not (generally) a fan of short stories but it was hard to put this book down. Engaging stories, well written.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews