OUT OF PATIENTS

In this novel, an aging doctor feels burned out and contemplates retirement, but then her life is stirred by new colleagues and a romance.

Norah Waters always wanted to become a physician—she played doctor when she was only 3 years old. Now she’s pushing 60 and, after 30 years of practice in Arizona, is mentally and emotionally depleted and ready to call it quits: “Seven more years to retirement. I could barely imagine doing this seven more days. It used to be that I thought about quitting every month or so. Then every week. Now I thought about it every single day. I had to get out of there.” In addition, she just broke up with her hopelessly irresponsible boyfriend, Austin, and is so depressed that her partners worry she’s suicidal. Then Norah takes on two medical students—George Clark and Jeremy Newell. The former is impossibly timid and all but incapable of discussing sex with his patients. The latter is incredibly arrogant, bereft of compassion, and astonishingly immature. Miller delivers an astutely sensitive depiction of life as a physician—all the ways in which a medical practice is a “little village” populated by “happy shoppers” and “unwilling tourists.” This is also a companionably agreeable novel laced with lightsome humor. Norah’s mother is an octogenarian unwilling to let go of her hippie past, looking to “make her life messy again, unpredictable,” and is a source of great amusement. But the plot moves at a leisurely pace and lacks the bite of a gripping, emotional drama. Norah is an intelligent character who thoughtfully grapples with the ennui that envelops her life, yet her disappointment is familiar and feels like the stuff of literary formula. Still, readers will appreciate the genuinely sharp insights into the often burdensome world of private medical practice.

A perceptive but uneven tale about a physician’s daily struggles.