Often with novels produced by TV writers (Mercurio wrote the
excellent drama Cardiac Arrest) we end up with something more like
a screenplay - all dialogue and direction, and no descriptive
power. This is a magnificent rejoinder to that. Mercurio (a former
doctor himself) brilliantly captures the early nerves and eagerness
of a young doctor, and slowly we watch him degenerate into
bitterness, cynicism, exploitative sex and an extra-curricular
dabble with prescription drugs. No single step in our doctor's walk
into the darkness is hugely dramatic. There are deaths, but they
are from mistakes and arrogance; our one move towards something
more sinister is quickly extinguished. Relationships fizzle and
die, and even the defining affair with a nurse is unsatisfactory,
hurried and immoral. Bitterness and despair seep through the novel
like blood through bandages, but the sheer pace and energy drag you
along, forcing you to empathise with an often unsympathetic
character, but one who, finally, drags himself back from the abyss
in order to take the morally correct decisions - which is all we
can ask of our medical profession. True to life, doing the right
thing isn't the easy thing, nor does it correct the wrongs, but it
gives the whole novel a backbone, and our character a chance at a
Final Judgement of his own, after watching so many others play God.
Mercurio is a talent to watch - his handling of the material is
assured, his use of footnotes to explain medical jargon is
informative and sometimes mocking, and his knowledge of the medical
profession both impressive and chilling. A major new voice in
modern fiction. (Kirkus UK)
A darkly powerful and blackly funny exposé of the horrors of life as a junior doctor, from the BAFTA award-winning creator of Bodyguard and Line of Duty
‘Funny, readable, galling, painful and terrifying in all the right places’ Guardian
Inside every hospital exists a world no outsider is allowed to see: a storm of malpractice, corruption, sex, drink and drop-dead exhaustion.
But for first day junior doctors, their initiation into this world – the ‘Killing Season’ – is about to begin.
A whistle-blowing despatch from the frontlines of hospital life, Jed Mercurio’s Bodies takes us on a nerve-jangling journey through one junior doctor’s loss of innocence, and his desperate, dangerous attempts to right his – and his colleagues’– wrongs.
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