Status Updates From The Best Medicine: Stories ...

A story that takes place around the 1920s (my guess), the mother is a wealthy factory owner, and father died. The mother believes the only heiress to the wealth is dying.

The daughter stayed up all night and talked to the doctor, confessing she doesn't think she is dying but is in fact lonely and gets (panic) "attacks" at night.

So thankful for the evolution of mental health and psychiatry.

“The Moons of Jupiter”, Alice Munro, 10/10. An unbelievably good story—the various elements skilfully introduced and masterfully intertwined until they’re almost unbearably charged with meaning, dotted with moments of blinding wisdom and poignancy. The frame—daughter helps her father through valvular heart disease—becomes a reckoning with death and a lifetime of regrets. Munro doesn’t ever miss.

“I WillKeepHer Company”, Rhys Davies, 5/10. A old man dies with his wife in their snowy rural Welsh cottage. Lots of pointless natural descriptions. The entire first sectioncould have been cut—start with Nurse Baldock, the snowplough, the helicopter.

“Life-Line”, Robert A. Heinlein, 7/10. A pleasant satirical story about a doctor who can predict the exact moment of death and all the ensuing societal repercussions. Satirical. The only story here that addresses medical research.

“Lady With A Lamp”, Dorothy Parker, 2/10. A terrible unreliable narrator story, not very funny, the voice poorly realized.

“Amy Foster”, Joseph Conrad, 6/10. Incredibly overwrought, but the central story of a shipwrecked immigrant in a small British town, is fine. “Yanko Goorall” would have been a better title.

“Let Mw Feel Your Pulse,” O. Henry, 5/10. So much of this story depends on the voice, which falls flat. I wasn’t even expecting a twist but I got one anyway—Amaryllis! That half of the story was better.

“Swept and Garnished,” Rudyard Kipling, 6.5/10. Acute encephalopathy 2/2 viral URI in the setting of national guilt regarding tge massacre of innocent children in wartime.

“People Like That are the Only People Here,” Lorrie Moore, 10/10. Really more like 11/10. 100/10. 999/10. Quite possibly the greatest short story this country has produced. Moved me to tears. On cancer, the wrenching anguish of parenting a sick child, the cursed existence of chronic inpatient life. I swear the text here is different from other versions, but then the story is also about storytelling itself.

“I Had to Go Sick”, Julian Maclaren Ross, 7/10. A runaround through WWII military healthcare bureaucracy. Surprisingly relatable 80 years later.

“Lord Mountdrago”, W. Somerset Maugham, 7/10. A speedy, dialogue-heavy fiction involving (yawn) a psychiatrist. Dream-reality parallels are well done. Superstitious elements not fully convincing.

“Airing A Greavance”, Anna Kavan, 6/10. Mostly a Kafkaesque voice story, about an anxious borderline paranoiac visiting an “advisor”. And why is he going on indefinite leave? So much in the shadows. Sometimes I think that some secret court must have tried and condemned me, unheard, to this heavy sentence.

“Doctor Crombie”, Graham Greene, 7.5/10. A weird little vignette about a doctor who’s fired over his committed belief that masturbation causes cancer. Definitely get pedophile vibes tbh.

“A Coup d’État,” Guy de Maupassant. 7/10. A politically ambitious doctor fails to seize his monent, then goes back to his practice. The end is wryly ironic, but the story feels slight.

“Back to Back”, WW Jacobs. 6/10 A comic story which is not really that funny tbh.