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Literature and Medicine 19.2 (2000) 300-302



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Book Review

The White Life


Michael Stein. The White Life. Sag Harbor, NY.: The Permanent Press, 1999. 176 pp. Paperback, $16.
I came to The White Life because of my father, although I didn't know it until years later. Illness held a special place for me because he died when I was thirteen. Love saves people, and so do doctors, and when I think of saving I think of my father and I think of medicine. (P. 13)

In the opening pages of his novel, The White Life, physician-author Michael Stein, speaking through the voice of the narrator, Dr. Peter Cave, draws readers instantly into the world of medicine and gives them access to Cave's uncensored views. Readers are immersed simultaneously in the mystery announced by the opening sentence's reference to "the man who killed my father," as well as in the personal interactions Cave has with his patients. Engaging as a story, The White Life is hard to put aside. Stein writes with intense honesty and intimacy, using deceptively simple language to raise troubling issues and profound questions. Make no mistake, this is a novel that succeeds on several levels.

Who are these people we call doctors? Drawn to medicine for a host of personal and professional reasons, their lives are marked by a curious blend of professional shields and public vulnerability. Traveling with Cave as he goes about his day, readers are privy to his innermost thoughts. Here a doctor, there a husband....We see his motivations, his doubts, his ambivalence, his temptations, in short his humanity. Given that we all carry our own baggage about doctors, stemming from [End Page 300] personal experiences with medical care, it is not surprising that we bring to this novel a mixture of feelings about doctors and doctoring. Regardless of our initial biases or final conclusions, taking the insider's journey with Peter Cave will inform our views.

There is no shortage of stories about doctors: from heartfelt tributes about the personal dedication and professional expertise that served to cure or at least to comfort us, to nightmarish tales about neglect, negligence, or worse. The images from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde have become commonly used metaphors for the human frailties in all of us and for the particular risks associated with the medical profession (even though Dr. Jekyll was involved in scientific research rather than in patient care). Although Peter Cave is protected in some measure by his "white coat," he is neither a Dr. Jekyll nor a Mr. Hyde. Rather, as the reader witnesses, Cave acknowledges his struggle to deal with personal vulnerabilities and to meet professional challenges. In the closing pages he revisits his decision to become a doctor, using disarming truthfulness: "I wanted to be a doctor so that I wouldn't make any mistakes in life. Doctors don't make mistakes. Perhaps I had a fear of being only a man" (pp. 173-74).

Another aspect of Stein's text that bears mention is the notion of healing/self-healing for doctors. In Cicero's Letters to His Friends he advises, "Do not imitate bad physicians, who in treating the diseases of others, profess to have mastered the whole art of healing, but themselves they cannot cure." 1 Cicero was neither the first nor the last to comment on the fact that medical knowledge does not render physicians immune to illness. While there is no epiphany associated with acknowledging this fact, it is evident that there is some degree of stigma, real or perceived, connected with illness in physicians. Stein's open exploration of Cave's concerns in this domain gives readers privileged insights into what is typically a clandestine area.

None of the foregoing comments on the depth of Stein's message precludes the beginning comments about the engaging aspects of the narrative. Stein's style has an easy almost flippant cadence, which moves readers along even as it periodically catches them off guard and makes them pause. Certainly, the author willingly acknowledges that doctors do not...

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