Not As a Stranger

by Morton Thompson

Powerful novel about a young doctor who lives for medicine and sacrifices everything for his career. Describes his years at medical school, his practice in a small town and his devoted self-sacrificing wife who works to make their marriage a success. Some strong language. Some explicit des. of sex.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Medicine, 20th Century, Literary Fiction, Medical, Media Tie In

696 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1954

Reviews

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this when I was about 14 - it made a great impression on me about morality and ethics. It was the first book I had read where I learned that loving someone with your whole heart and soul might not be enough for them to love you back - it moved my 14 year old world and it still sticks wwith me 50 years later as one of the best books I ever read.
Thank yoou Morton !

[Josefina Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Türkçesi ''Bir Yabancı Gibi'' adıyla çevrilmiş Halk Kitap evi yayınlamış tarih yok üstünde .Sahaflardan almıştım oldukça güzel bir eser. Macar romanlarına eserlerine hayranlığım gittikçe büyüyor Antal ve Szabo ve diğerleri olağan üstü yazarlar.

[Jude · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned from this book that a person can be in this world seemingly created for a life's work; can be near-flawless in the execution, but that he will evenutually discover that ends do not justify the means. The devil IS in the details and we are ALL bound to the same rules in life, no matter the size of our talent. This is the story of the making of one of the finest doctors ever to practice medicine but one who, with all his considerable ability, eventually finds that he plies his trade on HUMAN bodies and that THEY know the one thing that he resists learning; that he is one of us.

[Lola ameli_ · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Lukas now you became a doctor
But let me tell you, it is not Tubercolosis,
it is not cancer, it is not diarrhea, it is not skin infection,
the most worst desease you have to treat
But it is poverty... "

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book in high school. Reading it after 50 years in the medical field I found it was an entirely different book. It is the story of an idealistic man, Lucas Marsh, who, as a boy, followed the local town doctors around. Despite the objections of both parents he never wanted to do anything but become a physician. He becomes one, having married a Swedish nurse in order to finance his education. He and his wife move to a small town where he joins the practice of an older doctor who hopes to retire soon. Lucas is extremely idealistic and has a hard time adjusting to some of what he sees and experiences, including doctors who are incompetent, doctors who pad their charges with unnecessary procedures, kickbacks fro the druggists for prescriptions written, and the way doctors protect each other. He also resents his wife, now that he doesn't need her to pay his tuition. A typhoid fever outbreak, and then his first hunting trip with 3 other men soon changes his life and humanizes him so by the end of the book I came to like him. This story is set in the 1910's and 1920's but the issues faced by Lucas aren't much different today.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book when I was in nursing school (a long while ago) and never looked upon those cads of male interns the same again!

[HÜLYA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kaç gündür elimde süründü ama kitabi begenmediğim için değil de...Bu aralar aklımın çok karışık olmasından...
Çocukluğundan beri tek hayali doktor olmak isteyen Lucas Marsh'in hayatini kaleme almış yazar...
Doktorlar hakkında o zamana kadar yazılabilecek en kapsamli kitaplardan.
Roman bana A.J.Cronin'in Şahika isimli romanını hatırlattı....Ama Şahika bence çok daha iyi bir hikaye idi...
Güzel bir roman idi ancak doktorun yaptığı tıbbi müdahaleleri, ameliyatları da kapsamli olarak anlatması biraz sıktı beni..
Kitabi okumadan inceledigimde de yazıldığı zamanlarda filmi de çekilmiş..Başrollerinde Robert Mitchum,Olivia De Havilland ve Frank Sinatra'nin oynadığı bir film çekilmiş...
Oyunculardan Olivia de Havilland görünce oynadığı rolünde ne olduğunu hemen tahmin ettim Lucas'in karisi rolünde Christina Marsh...
Bu rol tam ona göremis. Zira bu fedakar kadının değerini bilmeyen Lucas onu çok da uzecektir...Ameliyat detayları dışında çok iyi kurgulanmış bir kitaptı...Çevirisini de beğendim akıyordu hikaye...
Sahalardan bulabilirsiniz okumanizi öneririm... #Kitap #mortonthompson

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Off to a strong start, but the last 3rd of the book was a mind numbing series of bloated speeches on the human condition and the business of medicine. I'd always prefer to have an author show me what's happening and let me form my own opinions rather than allow his characters to bloviate for page and after page on their own theories.

The book had a strong start and dealt head on with issues around marital rape, poverty, family dysfunction, and early 20th century views on the medical profession. He spent a goodly time exploring different characters and I was very optimistic about the story in general.

As the pages went by, the side characters continued to drop away until they were only props for the main character. So many missed opportunities to explore the motivations of others.

The main character was an incredibly unsavory person. Narcissistic, with a total absence of empathy. Was he supposed to be sympathetic? I found him repugnant. The women did not fare well at all. They fell into 3 buckets; spinster career women, vixens, and slavish spouses.

The ending? No, please, no. I can't even.

So why 4 stars? For the most part, the writing was compelling. There was lots of cool stuff about medicine during the first few decades of the 20th century and some food for thought regarding the medical community in general.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Dickensian work about a young man who wants to become a doctor. His obsession is rooted in early childhood he when he follows local doctors around town. His mis-matched parents (spiritualistic mother, entrepreneurial father) agree on only one thing — that he shouldn’t pursue medicine. His mother’s death, his father’s business crash leave him penniless. He marries an older woman, a Swedish nurse who is talented but considered a buffoon by everyone. Etc. Mostly skimmed after the first third.

[Brenda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book traces the life of a man who knew from a very early age that he wanted to be a doctor. It is set in the early part of the 20th century. It tells about the different types of people who become doctors - from those who want to help others to those who are just in it for the money. The author shares many of the struggles that doctors face and makes them human.

[Ann aka Iftcan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as a kid, probably too young to have read it. Unfortunately because of when I DID read it, I didn't understand some of the things that were going on, since it is set decades before I was even born, and my knowledge of history at the time was rather rudimentary.

I'm not sure how I feel about it now, but I do understand the MC's much better than I did as a 12 year old.

[Cyd · Rating 3 out of 5]

one of my first adult reads, it kept me going, but I really wanted his wife to just leave him!

[Sue Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book years ago. really liked it then. I think there was a movie made of it with Robert Mitchum.

[Marc Hansen · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is really not very good - - - it features some dumshit guy named Luke Marsh who has a one-track brain about being a doctor. He is totally oblivious to the world around him. His father is Job, a guy who sees everybody else as a set-up for getting cash for his harness business. The mother is a vegetarian spiritual lady who knows nothing about anything except for her boy Luke, whom she considers the property that she made. Doctors Alexander, Kellog, and Dwyer are the hicks that serve Milletta and the constipated patients that they see. Mr. Johnson is the long-suffering bursar at the medical college that Luke rips off. Alfred Boone is Luke's roommate who is in the medical profession for the money only and patients be damned, as long as he gets a yacht and a new automobile every year. Dr. Aarons is afraid to practice medicine and turns into a pathologist instead. Ruth and Ann are two boring lab workers. Dr. Runkleman wants the money to keep rolling in. Dr. Snyder mismanages and kills every patient he comes into contact with. Kristina is a good Swedish girl who somehow falls for Luke, who only wants her money and treats her as a table or bed or Senegambian. Harriet Lang is a pig. The rest of the book entails Luke getting lost in the woods and experiences an epiphany, which I doubt will last long. The best parts of the book are the medical descriptions. There isn't much to commend this book, so I recommend a PASS!!! Try reading about the history of the Maylayan Jungle Lemur of Madagascar instead!!!

[L. · Rating 2 out of 5]

The strange story about a strange couple who get together and have a strange child who grows up to be a buttmunch. All Lucas Marsh wants to do is become a doctor. Not for any altruistic reasons as he doesn't really get along with people. He barely manages to make it into medical school but when the money runs out he tricks Nurse Kristina into marrying him and keeping him up. Lucas repays Kristina by treating her like a dog. There is no real character development. In the very, very last few pages Lucas gets lost in the woods and this is all it takes to make him have an epiphany. Too little too late, Doc. I hate you.

The peek behind the curtain at the business of medicine was interesting and the only thing to keep me going. I had to use my superpowers of selective reading to manage to stay with the appealing parts while avoiding that loathsome slug of a main character. Can't say I recommend the movie either. (Wake up, Robert Mitchum, you're in a movie! Wake up!)

[Kallie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a couple of times, filched from my parents or maybe they didn't care. I was most impressed by the protagonist's efforts and sacrifices to stay in school; his dread of the bursar (a word I had never heard); his drive to become a doctor and practice medicine. The sexual parts were matter of fact and fascinating, but not sleazy, not at all. The wife's efforts on her husband's behalf . . . maybe now we would say that she was at too self-sacrificing and unappreciated. Her Scandinavian background and accent were looked down upon at that time, another window onto a very different American era.

[Lucy Takeda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Actually, not done!
I picked this up from the library because it is supposed to be the book of the year when I was born. I struggled through 100 pages of a conniving man who steals from his siblings and tricks and elderly man out of his store. I tried to feel sympathetic for the misguided spiritualist mother who distrusts doctors and almost starves her son to death because she knows more than anyone else. I threw in the towel when I hit rampant racism.

[Sheri-lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was the most popular book of 1954. I was close to giving it a 3. But meh.

It was interesting enough to keep my attention but was not very satisfying. Although it was believable and probably accurate to the time, it was hard to like the main character. Sigh. It also felt a bit like type casted characters — it would be a great 1950’s melodrama script.

But of interest, one of the characters I do like is a Canadian doctor who later in the book you find out is from Winnipeg. 🙂

[Jeannette · Rating 4 out of 5]

When you get a book for under $2.00 that was printed in 1956 this is what you get - 90 pages of yellowed tissue thin pages with the smallest printing that I have ever seen. You also get a sweeping story of a boy who always wanted to be a doctor. He cheated and schemed to get there and though that he was the GOD of medicine. In realty, he was just a doctor and no better or worse that others.

[Melanie Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read a book quite like this. The way it looks on life and people and living and humanity is almost stunning. And true. It makes you furious most of the time, and sad, or happy, but always entertained. I will never forget it. It is almost indescribable.

[Norman Weatherly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book took a bit of time to warm up to, but once it got going, it was a real page-turner. Morton Thompson has a somewhat different writing style, and I am not particularly keen on medicine but somehow or the other I found myself absorbed in this book.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Philosophical look at the medical profession

[Robert B · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great story for anyone interested in the evolution of the medical profession.

[Samantha Glasser]

This was on the New York Times best-seller list.

[Patti · Rating 5 out of 5]

The synopsis says it all. One of my all-time favorites

[Mary Kuettner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as a fifteen year old and fifty two years later I remember it vividly. I both admired and despised the main character. One of the first books that I read that I felt that way about.

[Serafim Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

750 páginas para perceber que os médicos são humanos.
Se não têm muito tempo para ler, não se justifica a leitura.

[George Krzewski · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing like the movie. One of the biggest best sellers of 1955, but why?

[Siempre que puedo leo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Es la vida de un médico y lo que sacrifica por lo que más quiere que es la medicina.

[Deodand · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a tough read. It's very densely written - it's the fictional life story of a boy who becomes a doctor, and it goes without skipping over any aspects of his life from boyhood to the establishment of his practice and beyond. It was interesting to get a perspective of what it was like to be a doctor before the development of antibiotics and modern anesthesia. There is also a lot of tension in this book. There is an unrelenting quality to the narrative, which can turn tiresome.

There are two more things that will throw off casual readers: One, there's a lot of unexplained medical terminology. Two, there are a lot of stomach-churning gross or scary medical details.