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Black Flies
A “raw and fascinating” novel based on the author’s experiences as a New York City paramedic during the crack epidemic—”Burke is a poet of trauma” ( Publishers Weekly , starred review).
Black Flies is the story of paramedic Ollie Cross and his first year on the job in mid-’90s Harlem. It is a ground’s eye view of life on the the shootouts, the bad cops, the hopeless patients, the dark humor in bizarre circumstances, and one medic’s struggle to maintain his desire to help despite his growing callousness. It is the story of lives that hang in the balance, and of a single job with a misdiagnosed newborn that sends Cross and his partner into a life-changing struggle between good and evil.
“Although Black Flies is a novel, it contains more reflections of lived experience than some memoirs. . . . Reading this arresting, confrontational book is like reading Dispatches , Michael Herr’s indelible account of his years as a reporter in Vietnam.” — The New York Times Book Review
Black Flies is the story of paramedic Ollie Cross and his first year on the job in mid-’90s Harlem. It is a ground’s eye view of life on the the shootouts, the bad cops, the hopeless patients, the dark humor in bizarre circumstances, and one medic’s struggle to maintain his desire to help despite his growing callousness. It is the story of lives that hang in the balance, and of a single job with a misdiagnosed newborn that sends Cross and his partner into a life-changing struggle between good and evil.
“Although Black Flies is a novel, it contains more reflections of lived experience than some memoirs. . . . Reading this arresting, confrontational book is like reading Dispatches , Michael Herr’s indelible account of his years as a reporter in Vietnam.” — The New York Times Book Review
184 pages, Paperback
First published April 28, 2008
49 people are currently reading
2151 people want to read
About the author
Shannon Burke
8 books50 followersShannon went to college at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He has published four novels: Safelight, Black Flies, Into the Savage Country, and The Brother Years. He has been involved in various film and TV projects, including work on the screenplay for the film Syriana, and he is the co-creator of the Netflix series Outer Banks. From the mid to late nineties he worked as a paramedic in Harlem for the New York City Fire Department. He now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee with his two sons.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 183 reviews
February 1, 2021
Although it's still January, I believe I may have just read the best book I'll read this year, or at least one of the top three.
This is a very specific story that addresses much bigger aspects of human nature. It's told in a very unconventional way, and is essentially plotless. That such a story has such an impact and says so much is a testament to Mr. Burke's writing skill. Who is this guy, and why have I never heard of him until now?
This novel, which is so vivid that I can only assume most of it was based on the author's real experience as an NYC paramedic for five years, could serve as a textbook for "show, don't tell." The real subjects of the book are simply not discussed. Why? Because it's a book about men, and men simply don't talk about this stuff. We don't talk about the uplifting effects of friendship or the way failure makes us behave badly, or how altruism makes us feel good and how sometimes being abusive also makes us feel good, until it starts feeling like failure. It just isn't discussed. But among men who work in highly consequential situations, who form tight, impenetrable teams, these unspoken subjects have a tendency to spill sideways out of the group and into the world at large, and the world at large cannot afford to ignore them.
We spend eleven months with the narrator, riding in an ambulance in Harlem. He's a rookie, doesn't know the ropes, and is thus strongly influenced by personalities both benevolent and malign. Good things happen, bad things happen, every day is generally the same but specifically different. Without calling attention to it, enough specifics pile up to eventually form into something resembling a plot, though it's difficult, in retrospect, to say exactly what the plot was. Every day, they get through the day. Every morning, they start over. Some can endure it and some can't.
Page by page, this is thrilling and appalling in equal measure. At the end, there's some very big ideas about the nature of altruism, the nature of desperate people, the awful lives of slum dwellers, how men bond and support one another and the price paid for weakness. The shortness of this book increases rather than diminishes its impact.
I'll be thinking about this one for a long time.
I was led to this book by an excellent review from Michelle; take her warnings seriously if you intend to read this.
This is a very specific story that addresses much bigger aspects of human nature. It's told in a very unconventional way, and is essentially plotless. That such a story has such an impact and says so much is a testament to Mr. Burke's writing skill. Who is this guy, and why have I never heard of him until now?
This novel, which is so vivid that I can only assume most of it was based on the author's real experience as an NYC paramedic for five years, could serve as a textbook for "show, don't tell." The real subjects of the book are simply not discussed. Why? Because it's a book about men, and men simply don't talk about this stuff. We don't talk about the uplifting effects of friendship or the way failure makes us behave badly, or how altruism makes us feel good and how sometimes being abusive also makes us feel good, until it starts feeling like failure. It just isn't discussed. But among men who work in highly consequential situations, who form tight, impenetrable teams, these unspoken subjects have a tendency to spill sideways out of the group and into the world at large, and the world at large cannot afford to ignore them.
We spend eleven months with the narrator, riding in an ambulance in Harlem. He's a rookie, doesn't know the ropes, and is thus strongly influenced by personalities both benevolent and malign. Good things happen, bad things happen, every day is generally the same but specifically different. Without calling attention to it, enough specifics pile up to eventually form into something resembling a plot, though it's difficult, in retrospect, to say exactly what the plot was. Every day, they get through the day. Every morning, they start over. Some can endure it and some can't.
Page by page, this is thrilling and appalling in equal measure. At the end, there's some very big ideas about the nature of altruism, the nature of desperate people, the awful lives of slum dwellers, how men bond and support one another and the price paid for weakness. The shortness of this book increases rather than diminishes its impact.
I'll be thinking about this one for a long time.
I was led to this book by an excellent review from Michelle; take her warnings seriously if you intend to read this.
May 4, 2015
The Hook - The recommendation of a GR friend led me to this book. It is Shannon Burke's second novel. The subject of a rookie paramedic in Harlem piqued my interest.
The Line – "I worked in Harlem and the place had begun to annoy me:" this is the beginning of the opening line, the prologue, our prep so to speak. If you want to see, to learn, to understand what annoys Ollie Cross you'll have to read the book.
The Sinker – Now that's what I call different. Not at all what I was expecting. Black Flies is staccato story telling, a no holds barred ride along in the first year of this paramedic. It read like narrative non-fiction. I'm hoping not all rookies experience the job as Ollie Cross does. Ollie should have been in med school but when he fails his MCATS he needs something to do while he prepares to try again. From the moment Cross's partner calls "Showtime" and tosses him the tube kit we know this is a story that illustrates the thin line between life and death. What we may not realize is where death and the cruelty of life may come from. I didn't like all that unfolded on these pages but I was mesmerized. I kept telling myself "it's fiction" but I'm not positive that's so. Shannon Burke is extremely talented in his delivery. Tense, tight, real, Black Flies is not for the weak-stomached. It is not for someone expecting an ambulance team who saves the victim and all is well. It is darn good and it is different.
The Line – "I worked in Harlem and the place had begun to annoy me:" this is the beginning of the opening line, the prologue, our prep so to speak. If you want to see, to learn, to understand what annoys Ollie Cross you'll have to read the book.
The Sinker – Now that's what I call different. Not at all what I was expecting. Black Flies is staccato story telling, a no holds barred ride along in the first year of this paramedic. It read like narrative non-fiction. I'm hoping not all rookies experience the job as Ollie Cross does. Ollie should have been in med school but when he fails his MCATS he needs something to do while he prepares to try again. From the moment Cross's partner calls "Showtime" and tosses him the tube kit we know this is a story that illustrates the thin line between life and death. What we may not realize is where death and the cruelty of life may come from. I didn't like all that unfolded on these pages but I was mesmerized. I kept telling myself "it's fiction" but I'm not positive that's so. Shannon Burke is extremely talented in his delivery. Tense, tight, real, Black Flies is not for the weak-stomached. It is not for someone expecting an ambulance team who saves the victim and all is well. It is darn good and it is different.
May 29, 2013
Shannon Burke puts the grit, gore, neglect, and decay right under the reader's nose in this harrowing novel. I had to close the book abruptly and mentally walk away twice, and physically walk away once, in response to the author's vividly detailed scenes from a day in the shift of paramedics working in Harlem during the mid-1990s. And although I read it nearly five years ago, even today I feel a creep of revulsion when I recollect two of these scenes, neither of which features blood, and one of which features one rotten vegetable and (arguably) zero bodily harm.
I recollect these scenes on occasion not because I have a taste for shock, or for art that markets and sells it, but because Black Flies is a morally affecting novel that has stayed with me. Besides, Burke does not sensationalize. He does not present these confrontational close- encounters with the mortally and mentally wounded for shock value. He isn't pandering to the fashionably macabre. Rather, Black Flies is, or should be, the antidote to all that. It really ought to knock the pretense off anyone's sleeve.
The novel explores the antagonism and comaraderie that can occur in any close-quarters, high-stress work environment that requires repetitive action--only doubly so when the work involves making choices that may determine whether a patient lives or dies. We see trust built, maintained, and lost. We see tension between some of the station's paramedics, some of whom don't play nice together, as well as between the station and the greater troubled Harlem that envelops it. Burke is a little less skilled at developing some of the peripheral relationships, such as that between the protagonist and his girlfriend; this relationship--its evolution and dissolution-- was the least gratifying and least emotionally believable.
Burke can also write tenderness, even in his fantastically terse style, and I felt plenty compassion for one particularly tormented paramedic on a rapidly escalating and horrifying downhill slide.
The book reads fast and lean, like an ambulance racing to the next person in dire need. And at the end of the book, I felt a bit of burnout, not unlike that which the narrator begins to feel--a process that begins to change him. I was ready to climb out the loss and despair in this novel, but felt tremendously uplifted for having read it, as I do after reading any deeply human novel.
I recollect these scenes on occasion not because I have a taste for shock, or for art that markets and sells it, but because Black Flies is a morally affecting novel that has stayed with me. Besides, Burke does not sensationalize. He does not present these confrontational close- encounters with the mortally and mentally wounded for shock value. He isn't pandering to the fashionably macabre. Rather, Black Flies is, or should be, the antidote to all that. It really ought to knock the pretense off anyone's sleeve.
The novel explores the antagonism and comaraderie that can occur in any close-quarters, high-stress work environment that requires repetitive action--only doubly so when the work involves making choices that may determine whether a patient lives or dies. We see trust built, maintained, and lost. We see tension between some of the station's paramedics, some of whom don't play nice together, as well as between the station and the greater troubled Harlem that envelops it. Burke is a little less skilled at developing some of the peripheral relationships, such as that between the protagonist and his girlfriend; this relationship--its evolution and dissolution-- was the least gratifying and least emotionally believable.
Burke can also write tenderness, even in his fantastically terse style, and I felt plenty compassion for one particularly tormented paramedic on a rapidly escalating and horrifying downhill slide.
The book reads fast and lean, like an ambulance racing to the next person in dire need. And at the end of the book, I felt a bit of burnout, not unlike that which the narrator begins to feel--a process that begins to change him. I was ready to climb out the loss and despair in this novel, but felt tremendously uplifted for having read it, as I do after reading any deeply human novel.
May 14, 2015
Very tough read. A first year parametric in Harlem. What goes on in the streets, and how these paramedics are affected is frightening.
September 27, 2017
Black Flies by Shannon Burke is a disturbing but highly enlightening book about the life of paramedics in New York City during the 1990s.... Harlem in particular. This story traces the daily routine of one particular medic, Ollie Cross, from his first day as a rookie to around his one year anniversary. My emotions certainly ran the gamut while reading this book. I had no problem understanding just how medics could become desensitized to the horrors that they often witnessed as part of their day- to- day routine. I felt immense compassion for the people and their deplorable living conditions and their obvious lack of and access to regular health care. But I also became angry with the medics and horrified at times at the way they sometimes ridiculed and actually caused bodily injury to some of their patients. Although I could sympathize with and understand the plight of these medics and the rage they felt over their helplessness over not being able to really make any changes in these people's lives, I did not find it acceptable for them to act out this anger. At that point, perhaps they had become TOO desensitized to the plight of their patients and they really were not doing good at all...and perhaps it was time to leave the job.
This was a very uncomfortable and heartbreaking book to read but like the proverbial car wreck, I found it impossible to pull my eyes away from this story.
This was a very uncomfortable and heartbreaking book to read but like the proverbial car wreck, I found it impossible to pull my eyes away from this story.
July 31, 2025
Gritty, bleak, seemingly hyperrealistic (I don't know enough about the subject to be sure.) This story of an aspiring med student who decides to be a paramedic in 1990's Harlem after he does not get into med school on the first try is very effective. The city eats away at his humanity every day, and there is an active battle between good and evil. Sometimes the battle is a little too on the nose. There are characters that are close to cartoons of the Devil and the Angel on Ollie's shoulders. There is nothing here that sings; the prose feels workmanlike, but workmanlike at a high level, not art but good craft. It ends with a very faint whiff of redemption, the reader is not going to come away from this with any sense of faith in humankind. I think the author accomplished exactly what he wanted to accomplish, and that impresses the heck out of me. It reads like a war novel but it is set where I live and where our wars are undeclared by Act of Congress.
Thanks to Left Coast Justin for not only recommending this book, but for actually sending me his copy. I am glad I read this one. You are the best of reading friends, Justin! Next time you visit I will take you to Harlem so you can see how bougie the area described here has become. I laughed when they used the words Riverside Park to indicate an end times sense of decay and desolation. It is now a place I mostly can't afford to live.
A 3.5 rounded up.
Thanks to Left Coast Justin for not only recommending this book, but for actually sending me his copy. I am glad I read this one. You are the best of reading friends, Justin! Next time you visit I will take you to Harlem so you can see how bougie the area described here has become. I laughed when they used the words Riverside Park to indicate an end times sense of decay and desolation. It is now a place I mostly can't afford to live.
A 3.5 rounded up.
July 25, 2023
Wow. This book is incredible. I don't even want to describe it in a practical way; it's just one of those books that grabs you on the first page and doesn't set you down until you hit the last page. I was rapt.
It's a Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now journey without the jungles of foreign lands; instead, you are given a lens that explores a clash of American culture in its own NYC everyday war zone: social class, educational class, economic class, and the choices one makes about power. The driver is a medic with an ambulance crew in Harlem, and he has his own ambition and do-good intentions. The honest unraveling is harrowing, but the catharsis is the kind of gritty we all crave to experience when looking for the authentic "heroic" tale. I actually cried at the end (not a lot but--what?!).
File Under: Highly recommend to everyone.
It's a Heart of Darkness or Apocalypse Now journey without the jungles of foreign lands; instead, you are given a lens that explores a clash of American culture in its own NYC everyday war zone: social class, educational class, economic class, and the choices one makes about power. The driver is a medic with an ambulance crew in Harlem, and he has his own ambition and do-good intentions. The honest unraveling is harrowing, but the catharsis is the kind of gritty we all crave to experience when looking for the authentic "heroic" tale. I actually cried at the end (not a lot but--what?!).
File Under: Highly recommend to everyone.
July 12, 2014
Black Flies is a dark bleak ride-- so different than the lyricism of Burke's debut, Safelight: A Novel. The medics of this Harlem clan are burnt to a critical level. Fortunately, there are a few (very few) bright souls shining amidst the darkness. I became weary of the never-ending stream of carnage and gore, cruelty and callousness, all the while waiting for a plot to emerge. Although, I'm a medic in Miami-Dade, Burke's relentless parade of rotting bodies began to wear at me. I'm glad I carried on because the end had an emotional payoff worth working toward.
One thing Burke excels at is the character arc. His characters have a subtle yet utterly believable transformation that is emotionally satisfying. Throughout his stories you hold your breath to see if his characters will utterly destroy their souls, Black Flies shows, as did Safelight, that it is not the patients and the carnage who are the real danger, it is the people we work with and how their beliefs and attitudes permeate us that we must watch out for. Usually it is the ones who act the hardest and talk the toughest that are the most vulnerable and weak of all.
One thing Burke excels at is the character arc. His characters have a subtle yet utterly believable transformation that is emotionally satisfying. Throughout his stories you hold your breath to see if his characters will utterly destroy their souls, Black Flies shows, as did Safelight, that it is not the patients and the carnage who are the real danger, it is the people we work with and how their beliefs and attitudes permeate us that we must watch out for. Usually it is the ones who act the hardest and talk the toughest that are the most vulnerable and weak of all.
October 12, 2008
Black Flies by Shannon Burke is a masterpiece of characterization and plot. Burke, a former paramedic in Harlem, New York, weaves his disjointed plot through a series of in-depth characterizations and vivid event descriptions. He traces the steps rookie Ollie Cross takes as he tries to fit in with the Station 18 crew and still hold onto his dreams of medical school, and along the way he spirals out of control, only to emerge on the other side of a black hole with his first save and a sense of purpose.
Ollie is green according to the other paramedics in his unit, simply because he wants to save lives and is gung-ho about his job. Rutkovsky is assigned as his partner, and he's a hard-nosed paramedic with a military past. LaFontaine is the department nut, while Verdis is his foil, interested in following the book and attending each patient with courtesy and care. Hatsuru is often in the background with a medical text in his hand while they await the next call or are on lunch break, and Marmol and Rivett round out the rest of the crew.
Ollie joins the paramedic unit to gain experience while he studies for the MCATs, hoping to improve his scores and get into medical school. Amidst high crime rates, homelessness, and rampant drug use in the streets of Harlem, these medical professionals strive to save the lives of people some would say are unworthy of saving. This novel examines the struggle these paramedics face daily, regarding split-second decisions that could either save drug addicts who will only end up back on the street stung out or ending their misery by refusing to treat them. The moral imperative driving these paramedics to save lives is constantly tested on the streets.
One fateful event in the novel pushes one of these paramedics over the edge, causing him to lose everything, while leaving the remaining paramedics to rationalize his decision and examine their own moral compass to determine whether that decision is something they all agree with or something that casts a shadow over all of their medical decisions and actions. In a way this decision becomes like so many black flies hovering over Ollie and the rest of the station.
Ollie is green according to the other paramedics in his unit, simply because he wants to save lives and is gung-ho about his job. Rutkovsky is assigned as his partner, and he's a hard-nosed paramedic with a military past. LaFontaine is the department nut, while Verdis is his foil, interested in following the book and attending each patient with courtesy and care. Hatsuru is often in the background with a medical text in his hand while they await the next call or are on lunch break, and Marmol and Rivett round out the rest of the crew.
Ollie joins the paramedic unit to gain experience while he studies for the MCATs, hoping to improve his scores and get into medical school. Amidst high crime rates, homelessness, and rampant drug use in the streets of Harlem, these medical professionals strive to save the lives of people some would say are unworthy of saving. This novel examines the struggle these paramedics face daily, regarding split-second decisions that could either save drug addicts who will only end up back on the street stung out or ending their misery by refusing to treat them. The moral imperative driving these paramedics to save lives is constantly tested on the streets.
One fateful event in the novel pushes one of these paramedics over the edge, causing him to lose everything, while leaving the remaining paramedics to rationalize his decision and examine their own moral compass to determine whether that decision is something they all agree with or something that casts a shadow over all of their medical decisions and actions. In a way this decision becomes like so many black flies hovering over Ollie and the rest of the station.
July 9, 2009
For such a short read this book packs a powerful punch. In Black Flies author Shannon Burke, a former paramedic who worked in Harlem, gives an honest and grim portrait of what Harlem paramedics encounter on a daily basis. It is a dark novel filled with disturbing events of death, gunshot victims, drug addicts and other gruesome things paramedics face while working in a crime-filled, poverty-ridden neighborhood. The book follows Ollie Cross during his first year as a medic and chronicles his daily struggle with the things he sees while treating patients, how he copes, and how he finds that difficult balance between work and his personal life.
Black Flies is a commanding, seemingly true-to-life look into a world that not many people witness. The vivid accounts of roach-invested tenements and people left destitute in the worst and most hopeless of conditions serve as a reminder to appreciate the things you have in your life. The author is formidable and graphic in his descriptions, even grisly at times, but if you can handle the severity I highly recommend reading this book. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. People who work in the medical field or who have an interest in medicine may find this particularly interesting and/or informative, if not disturbing.
Black Flies is a commanding, seemingly true-to-life look into a world that not many people witness. The vivid accounts of roach-invested tenements and people left destitute in the worst and most hopeless of conditions serve as a reminder to appreciate the things you have in your life. The author is formidable and graphic in his descriptions, even grisly at times, but if you can handle the severity I highly recommend reading this book. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. People who work in the medical field or who have an interest in medicine may find this particularly interesting and/or informative, if not disturbing.
March 3, 2013
This is a very gritty and grisly book describing the paramedics who work on the ambulances in Harlem in New York City. The job is more than draining – it corrodes the lives of most of these workers. They are faced with rescuing many patients who are at the dead-end of society – drug addicts, homeless people, gang members… Most of the public loathe them. It’s a thankless job.
The book is narrated from the first-person. The job and the people doing it are vividly described. Like most jobs there are good and bad individuals, but due to the nature of the work the ‘bad’ individuals are empowered and become abusive.
The power of this book is that we feel the narrator being swept in by all aspects of what he encounters on the job. Like most jobs in takes you within its confines and you become submerged within it – like a member of a cult. You become accepted by your co-workers and it is only your co-workers who relate to the unique circumstances of the work environment. As the story progresses the narrator becomes alienated from friends and family – they become outsiders to his working realm, not part of his world. The work becomes so dominate that burn-out symptoms become unrecognizable.
The extreme nature of the paramedics work makes this well worth reading. Unlike many other works of fiction we are not burdened with an over excess of words and pages.
The book is narrated from the first-person. The job and the people doing it are vividly described. Like most jobs there are good and bad individuals, but due to the nature of the work the ‘bad’ individuals are empowered and become abusive.
The power of this book is that we feel the narrator being swept in by all aspects of what he encounters on the job. Like most jobs in takes you within its confines and you become submerged within it – like a member of a cult. You become accepted by your co-workers and it is only your co-workers who relate to the unique circumstances of the work environment. As the story progresses the narrator becomes alienated from friends and family – they become outsiders to his working realm, not part of his world. The work becomes so dominate that burn-out symptoms become unrecognizable.
The extreme nature of the paramedics work makes this well worth reading. Unlike many other works of fiction we are not burdened with an over excess of words and pages.
January 1, 2012
Found this book in a bookstore in San Francisco, not the usual book I would read, but somehow I was drawn to it. This is a grim, realistic, minimalistic, direct and very well written book, gives an upclose and confronting view of young paramedic Ollie Cross. Having missed out on medical school, he signs up as paramedic patrolling the streets in New York (Harlem) with a number of colorful characteristic partners, to get experience and try to get into medical school this way. He gets sucked into the tragic events and patients a paramedic encounters on the streets of Harlem, shoot-outs, suicides,bad accidents, bad cops, unhinged medics, hopeless situations. Ollie starts out optimistic and spirals down a depressive route, barely surviving. Realistic pictures of the team, the partnership, the wrong colleagues and the tragedy of some paramedics who can't cope in the end, the camaraderie between the partners... it was a book I got into from the first page and could not put it down. A realistic struggle between good and evil within the paramedics is basically what you witness, a struggle where the borders between good and evil seem vague in the end. Reads easy and quickly and I found the last 50 pages an emotional read. Highly recommended, great great book.
August 21, 2008
An excellent story. Burke's account is based on his years as a paramedic in harlem. Not for weak stomachs, in fact, do not read until an hour has passed after your last meal. If you ate a hot dog, make it three hours.
December 15, 2017
Benvenuti all'inferno. Il Bronx degli anni Novanta, un posto dimenticato da Dio e dall'America, un angolo di terzo mondo nella capitale mondiale del capitalismo, dove sparatorie, droga, costruzioni fatiscenti e condizioni igieniche inverosimili sono le minacce quotidiane contro le quali si ergono il protagonista e i suoi colleghi, infermieri del pronto intervento. Il libro è costruito in maniera magistrale, con un chiaro obiettivo e una perfetta struttura narrativa. Gli elementi splatter sono stati trovati eccessivi dagli amici di maddecheaoh, che l'hanno bocciato pressoché unanimemente per la lettura di gruppo, e devo ammettere che rendono il libro non accessibile a persone facilmente impressionabili: persino io, che sono di stomaco forte dal vivo e quindi a maggior ragione leggendo, ho trovato una scena che mi ha disturbato. Tuttavia non si tratta di un elemento ricercato, ma di una componente essenziale del libro, senza la quale mancherebbe l'elemento di caratterizzazione più forte dell'ambiente. L'unico difetto che ho trovato è una certa dose di prevedibilità, che credo sia inevitabile, per il tipo di storia; anzi, il margine di dubbio che l'autore riesce a lasciare è fin troppo ampio. Quattro stelle sono per me il limite naturale dei libri belli o molto belli che non rientrano nella fascia protetta dei capolavori.
April 14, 2008
I took this book to the laundry mat, which is where I do most of my reading on Sundays. I finished it later that evening.
I loved this book for its honesty and realistic accounts of what a paramedic goes through in Harlem. Their job is so very very important, yet in this book he is never thanked or appreciated by the community. Its hard job to see death and horror on a daily basis, and eventually he sees himself changing.
I dont want to add spoilers to this. I do recommend it as its a good read!
I loved this book for its honesty and realistic accounts of what a paramedic goes through in Harlem. Their job is so very very important, yet in this book he is never thanked or appreciated by the community. Its hard job to see death and horror on a daily basis, and eventually he sees himself changing.
I dont want to add spoilers to this. I do recommend it as its a good read!
September 2, 2021
I start this review by saying, I am not a medic. While my end goal is to be one, my current status is of an EMT, running 911 calls in LA County. With that being said, this book was relatable in many ways. What was most relatable were the quotes of the opening video in Ollie's paramedic academy scattered throughout the novel. The quotes of what it means to be a medic, what it takes to work in EMS, those are what hit home. For most of those in EMS, the reason we put ourselves in the lives of strangers in what are typically their worst or quite literally their last moments of their lives, is to make in impact. To quite possibly save their lives. And it's not for the glory, or the honor, or recognition, it's the innate love for a stranger. While those moments may be few and far between, it's for those moments that make the emotional and physical toll at times, worthwhile. You can give out awards, and honors and recognition, but at the end of the day, it's the people that you impact that matter the most.
July 5, 2023
“Black Flies” follows a rookie FDNY Paramedic during his first year of service in Harlem during the 1990s. “Black Flies” is blunt and pulls no punches as it details young Ollie’s desperate struggle to maintain his sanity and empathy in a culture of disenfranchised, weary and bitter paramedics. Burke’s vivid and graphic storytelling brings to life the senseless violence and chronic poverty that plagues many urban communities, especially those as ravaged as Harlem.
“Black Flies” is something of a coming-of-age story as it follows Ollie on his journey from a new, impressionable and eager rookie to a hardened and confident paramedic. His growth is not without its detriments, and at a pivotal moment he must chose between holding fast in his morals or descending into evil when his paramedic mentor makes an egregious mistake.
“Black Flies” is something of a coming-of-age story as it follows Ollie on his journey from a new, impressionable and eager rookie to a hardened and confident paramedic. His growth is not without its detriments, and at a pivotal moment he must chose between holding fast in his morals or descending into evil when his paramedic mentor makes an egregious mistake.
April 9, 2024
I read this because I am a paramedic. I wanted to read it before I decided whether or not to see the movie titled “Asphalt City”. I enjoyed the book and did not see the ending coming. It’s a raw real look at inner city EMS. It’s very different than rural EMS where I worked. There is no doubt that this book and the movie are accurate depictions of the daily reality of that life. I will not see the movie because of one scene that is the brutal killing of a dog. Other than that, the book was somewhat interesting.
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July 3, 2020Tight and blunt with a tragic Clockers vibe.
October 9, 2025
A very well executed parable about the personal transformation that happens to almost everyone who works in emergency medicine. Illustrated very well is the fact that altruistic intentions and a hero complex leave a person vulnerable to all the exact opposite impulses. Compassion fatigue, desensitization, and abuse and assault can make the highest minded provider despise the people they’re supposed to help. Emotional energy must follow some kind of conservation law: if you don’t love me for saving you, then I hate you.
The portrait of the inner life of Ollie Cross, the rookie paramedic and protagonist, rings extremely true as he grapples with the narcissism of working as a “savior”, with misanthropy, and the personal alienation that results from the industrialized experience of trauma that is the job description of modern emergency services. As do the personalities he encounters in his patients and colleagues. Everyone in the field has met these archetypes of the weird world of EMS.
Is the prose great? No. Is the book a little melodramatic and peppered with Law and Order style stereotypes and tropes that border on exploitation? Yes. But it must be very difficult to write a novel about a world where the only stories you get are vignettes: strange and highly cinematic sometimes but ultimately without beginning or end, without context. The author does a good job punctuating the narrative with EMS calls some of which I’m positive are barely fiction, and giving a sense of the odd, frantic pace of the work.
The portrait of the inner life of Ollie Cross, the rookie paramedic and protagonist, rings extremely true as he grapples with the narcissism of working as a “savior”, with misanthropy, and the personal alienation that results from the industrialized experience of trauma that is the job description of modern emergency services. As do the personalities he encounters in his patients and colleagues. Everyone in the field has met these archetypes of the weird world of EMS.
Is the prose great? No. Is the book a little melodramatic and peppered with Law and Order style stereotypes and tropes that border on exploitation? Yes. But it must be very difficult to write a novel about a world where the only stories you get are vignettes: strange and highly cinematic sometimes but ultimately without beginning or end, without context. The author does a good job punctuating the narrative with EMS calls some of which I’m positive are barely fiction, and giving a sense of the odd, frantic pace of the work.
January 13, 2022
Un libro che mostra il lato oscuro dell'uomo, una corazza di indifferenza ed egoismo eretta a difesa di noi stessi. Un egoismo che, se ci difende da un lato, è capace di distruggerci in poco tempo, nel profondo, facendo crollare tutto. Un passaggio in un mondo degradato, squallido, crudo, aberrante, dove è possibile, forse, aprire uno spiraglio.
March 7, 2024
I picked up this book because it is the basis for Sean Penn's new movie 'Asphalt City'. It is a young paramedics acct of his work in Harlem during the opiate crisis. It is a tough dark tough read but it did give a realistic account of how difficult and psychologically draining the job is. I thought the ending was heart warming and tied it all together.
June 11, 2023
Short and well paced. The emotional horrors keeps you captivated. My favourite book ever.
July 10, 2025
crazy that this is basically someone’s reality
June 4, 2025
Great pallet cleanser. Gritty, disturbing, and just what I wanted to read on a flight to Salt Lake City. NYC in the 90s sounds tough.
July 25, 2025
he loves helping people! 😃
January 17, 2010
Burke is a former paramedic, and both his novels (this one and the one preceding it) deal with that world. Black Flies is about a young guy who didn't quite make it into medical school and is floundering, trying to figure out where he belongs in the world. He takes a job as a paramedic in Harlem. This is in 1990s, and things were ... vivid.
I've always been interested in all things medical. I read a lot about this stuff and I watch a lot of documentaries. I can watch surgery without a problem, which is very odd, given my utter lack of ability to deal with needles. So I'm interested in this topic going in, and I'm not squeamish. I can take a fair about of blood and guts if they are part of a larger story that is well told. However, I have to warn potential readers who are less hardboiled than I am: this novel is very graphic in its descriptions of emergency medical treatment and most especially in the way Burke's Ollie sees and responds to death.There is no romanticizing here. So you are forewarned.
If that's not an issue for you and you're interested in the time and place and the idea of paramedics in a war zone, then this is a quick read and a thought provoking one. The mid 90s seem like an eternity ago, but Black Flies does a good job of bringing that period back to mind. In this setting you have a guy coming into the Harlem station, his first job as a paramedic, and we experience that with him. How he sees his coworkers, some of them burned out to the point of of zombie-like indifference. Some of them idealistic and generous. Some just there to do the job and get the paycheck. Ollie Cross takes it all in as he works on his technical skills, and as he gets deeper into that world he begins to withdraw from the other people in his life.
There are some characters here who are less well developed than they deserve to be, but all in all my sense is that Burke understands the world he is writing about. He certainly made me see it, in vivid color. I'm not going to say more about it for fear of giving away too much, but I do recommend it -- given the reservations noted above.
Safelight is a first novel that looks at many of the same issues as Black Fly, but it doesn't do it as well. (And isn't that the way it's supposed to be? A novelist gets better with every new novel.) Safelight is about Frank, a young paramedic who has recently lost his father to suicide. In response he plunges into every kind of self-destructive behavior he can scare up, from theft to getting involved with a woman with a terminal (and infectious) disease. An angry young man, in other words. Daring the universe to give him its worst, and taking photographs along the way to document the world as he sees it: squalor, pain, despair, loss. His photography is one way of venting the turmoil inside him. He photographs suicide victims, rotting corpses, dying street people, HIV positive prostitutes.
In other words, this is a man-of-pain novel. An ode to nihilism, and it irritated me. A lot. I have no trouble with the subject matter, but it's a lot for a first time novelist to handle. I'm still thinking about what went wrong for me, and the best I can come up with (as of this moment) is this: the character is in trouble. He pushes everything to extremes. The author's job is to make us see that, but without indulging in the same excesses as his character. I think Burke had trouble keeping the upper hand in the writing of this novel, and the results don't work for me.
I've always been interested in all things medical. I read a lot about this stuff and I watch a lot of documentaries. I can watch surgery without a problem, which is very odd, given my utter lack of ability to deal with needles. So I'm interested in this topic going in, and I'm not squeamish. I can take a fair about of blood and guts if they are part of a larger story that is well told. However, I have to warn potential readers who are less hardboiled than I am: this novel is very graphic in its descriptions of emergency medical treatment and most especially in the way Burke's Ollie sees and responds to death.There is no romanticizing here. So you are forewarned.
If that's not an issue for you and you're interested in the time and place and the idea of paramedics in a war zone, then this is a quick read and a thought provoking one. The mid 90s seem like an eternity ago, but Black Flies does a good job of bringing that period back to mind. In this setting you have a guy coming into the Harlem station, his first job as a paramedic, and we experience that with him. How he sees his coworkers, some of them burned out to the point of of zombie-like indifference. Some of them idealistic and generous. Some just there to do the job and get the paycheck. Ollie Cross takes it all in as he works on his technical skills, and as he gets deeper into that world he begins to withdraw from the other people in his life.
There are some characters here who are less well developed than they deserve to be, but all in all my sense is that Burke understands the world he is writing about. He certainly made me see it, in vivid color. I'm not going to say more about it for fear of giving away too much, but I do recommend it -- given the reservations noted above.
Safelight is a first novel that looks at many of the same issues as Black Fly, but it doesn't do it as well. (And isn't that the way it's supposed to be? A novelist gets better with every new novel.) Safelight is about Frank, a young paramedic who has recently lost his father to suicide. In response he plunges into every kind of self-destructive behavior he can scare up, from theft to getting involved with a woman with a terminal (and infectious) disease. An angry young man, in other words. Daring the universe to give him its worst, and taking photographs along the way to document the world as he sees it: squalor, pain, despair, loss. His photography is one way of venting the turmoil inside him. He photographs suicide victims, rotting corpses, dying street people, HIV positive prostitutes.
In other words, this is a man-of-pain novel. An ode to nihilism, and it irritated me. A lot. I have no trouble with the subject matter, but it's a lot for a first time novelist to handle. I'm still thinking about what went wrong for me, and the best I can come up with (as of this moment) is this: the character is in trouble. He pushes everything to extremes. The author's job is to make us see that, but without indulging in the same excesses as his character. I think Burke had trouble keeping the upper hand in the writing of this novel, and the results don't work for me.
November 10, 2022
Oscuro, potente, sporco e reale. Un anno a bordo di un’ambulanza in servizio ad Harlem. Tratto da una storia vera, il racconto del mestiere del paramedico, senza fronzoli, a tu per tu con la strada e la morte, fra pazienti in crisi di astinenza e l’orrore che si insinua in ogni cosa, come un male che avviluppa tutto. Complimenti all’editore Marotta&Cafiero per averlo pubblicato. Consigliatissimo
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April 16, 2014"When the really hot weather began the average number of medical emergency jobs in the city went from 2,300 a day to around 3,600 and sometimes up above 4,000. North of 125th Street, heat meant irritable, tired, uncomfortable people crammed together on sidewalks, on stoops, and beneath awnings. It meant murders, clashes with police. It meant suicides, domestic disputes, everyone short-tempered, bickering with us, and us with them. It meant that they cancelled our vacations and our weekends and then increased the shifts from eight to twelve and then to sixteen hours. And we expected this. It was part of the job. And it's not that we freaked out or lost our minds in any obvious way, but as one day bled into the next, and as our entire waking lives became a relentless round of stabbings, shootings, heart attacks, asthmatics, schizophrenics, bloated corpses, anything the city could offer up, I think we lost track of what was considered to be normal - the siren, the stretcher, the flashing lights, the needles, the blood, and the weeping relatives - that was everything life had to offer. And the relentless weirdness and banal horror of the job brought on a feeling of being at ease in the bizarre, alternate universe of medical emergencies, injuries, and sudden death. I remember breaking down a locked door and putting an old woman's head between my legs and shoving a five-inch laryngoscope blade down her throat while her family watched and thinking that this was just an ordinary occurrence. Of feeling unsurprised as I walked through the shell of an abandoned building to find a kid against the wall, the kid pulling a hand from his belly to show coiled, blue intestines spilling out. Of idly seeing splintered bones pierced through skin. Of seeing the skull beneath the scalp, and the brain beneath the skull. Of seeing eyeballs popped out and lying there with the ganglia still attached. Of seeing the chest open and the heart still beating with an unreal, spastic sort of motion, like a separate living thing...." pp. 90-91
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