Medicine Men

by Alice Adams

“A painful and hilarious send-up of grandiose doctors and their barbaric medical miracles. . . . A postmodern Jane Austen romp.” – The Boston Globe
 
In a novel that brilliantly conjures up the resilience of the human spirit, Alice Adams draws a clear-eyed portrait of a woman who must overcome her resistance to the help offered by others.
 
Molly Brenner suffers from guilt and headaches. The guilt arrives with the insurance money she receives after the accidental death of her second husband (she was on the verge of separating). And the headaches she at first thinks are just a neurotic manifestation, but when she is diagnosed with a malignancy, she finds herself  once again depending on a man, this time from a profession she loathes, the medical profession.
 

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

239 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Alice Adams was an American novelist, short story writer, academic and university professor.

She was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia and attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1946. She married, and had a child, but her marriage broke up, and she spent several years as a single mother, working as a secretary. Her psychiatrist told her to give up writing and get remarried; instead she published her first novel, Careless Love (1966), and a few years later she published her first short story in The New Yorker. She wrote many novels but she's best known for her short stories, in collections such as After You've Gone (1989) and The Last Lovely City (1999).

She won numerous awards including the O. Henry Award, and Best American Short Stories Award.

Reviews

[Kate · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unlikable characters, unpolished prose. Lots of tell-not-show.
Reminder to self: it's Alice MUNRO who's the genius. No more picking up Alice Adams by mistake just because a long-ago friend liked reading her.

[Nanmom317 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mildly interesting but there are much better books on this subject. I really wanted to know more about Molly’s battle with cancer and less about the supporting characters. For more interesting reading about battles with severe illness, try “Brain on Fire”

[Katie Quinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Misogyny, racism, ageism, and classism. All the isms. I just kept reading to see if it would get any better and if the main character would end up showing some character. It kind of petered out at the end, instead.

[Rosanne Swiatek · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just OK. Wandering theme, not a page-turner. I was actually more distracted by the author's overuse of punctuation marks, especially commas, colons, semi-colons, and parentheses. Take these keys off her computer and the book would be half as long. The book centers around two friends and their relationships with doctors. One of the friends is afflicted with a rare cancer but the reader is left wondering how all this eventually turns out. Then the focus changes to two other women, one of them a doctor's wife -- actually this doctor has had a long affair with one of the friends in the start of the story. The other woman then has a relationship with the former husband of the other friend in the start of the story. All very confusing, not very interesting or fulfilling. Really a romance novel of sorts with no plot.

[Denise Hlavka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another Alice Adams. The jacket blurb led me to believe this would be much more a closer look at the journey of cancer treatment, but instead was more about the personality of doctors. I found it dated and sexist, which many be reflective of the time...the 90's, but it was difficult to find much empathy for the characters. Doctors really come off as total jerks, interested only in their godlike powers, and totally detached from what their patients say or feel. The protagonist, Molly Bonner, seems completely unrealistic (to me) in her expectations, although I could relate to getting lost in the mire of the medical profession and being passed from one doctor to another. The auxiliary character, Felicia, was far more real, even if her fascination with doctors was for unaltruistic reasons. Not an easy read, and somewhat unrewarding.

[Karen Pirrung · Rating 1 out of 5]

Ugh! This one was hard to read. It was the literary achievement of publish your own boring journal. The medical information was half cooked. Where things could have gotten interesting, it appeared that the author didn’t really have adequate knowledge on the subject to make her story interesting.

I found the grammar exceeding difficult to comprehend. Sentences seemed non-sense, until I read and re-read them with different punctuation. I found world capitalized in the middle of sentences, which made me search for some hidden reason or cause, only to be disappointed again by simple misuse of the rule.

If you want a better book, there are several to choose from. If you are looking for a quick way to induce sleep … this would fit the bill.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this book, but I didn't love it. It was compelling enough for me to keep reading, but not compelling enough to really excited me. I enjoyed it, but not overwhelmingly so. The title is apt because the book basically focuses on three women: Molly, Felicia, and Connie and how they relate to doctors: as patients, as wives, and as mistresses. The doctors in question have a variety of personalities. Dave is chauvinistic and overbearing. Raleigh "Sandy" Sanderson is just a womanizing jerk. There's also a cast of supporting characters who factor in here and there. Overall, a fairly quick read about some relationships that is enjoyable, but not live altering.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 2 out of 5]

I need a second opinion. Alice Adams wins high praise, generally, but Medicine Men didn't do anything for me. The characters are heavily stereotyped, the plot moves around like a Spirograph (the partner-swapping in particular just isn't credible) and male doctors and medical facilities are painted with a broadly unflattering brush. It felt like a soap opera about halfway in. I kept reading, hoping that Adams would off a character or two. No such luck.

[Pam · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the greatest.
Very uncomplimentary toward doctors and was supposed to be funny I think. Unfortunately, a lot of it was probably more true to life than we would like to think. Hopefully times have changed since the 90's and the doctors have learned to be more patient friendly and the patients have learned to speak up and get involved in their own care.
The story didn't really go anywhere.
Would make a good comedy movie probably.

[Masika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty strange book, but I enjoyed it. It focused, maybe to much, on the perceptions and stigmas Doctors of all kinds have. Although, I totally agree with some of the stereotypes of Doctors, I found it to get a little tiring after I read half of the book.
The main character in the book is somewhat neurotic, but I guess we all are, on some level.

[Amy · Rating 1 out of 5]

The jacket cover description is way off...This book was not what I expected. I kept reading it hoping it would get better but it never did. Apparently nurses are supposed to please the doctors after a surgery and a common name for us is 'girl'. I would not recommend this book :(

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Do you like stories where old man doctors sneak into ladies' gardens and pee in the bushes? Why, you'll love this book!

[Michele · Rating 3 out of 5]

Medicine Men by Alice Adams (1997)

[Jane Gehr · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, that's two days of my life I'll never get back. Not a single likable character, nobody learned anything, and the telling was disjointed and confusing. Don't waste your time.

[kristy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very dated

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok