2006 Giller Prize Winner

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Product Description

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures welcomes readers into a world where the most mundane events can quickly become life or death. By following four young medical students and physicians – Ming, Fitz, Sri and Chen – this debut collection from 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Vincent Lam is a riveting, eye-opening account of what it means to be a doctor. Deftly navigating his way through 12 interwoven short stories, the author explores the characters’ relationships with each other, their patients, and their careers. Lam draws on his own experience as an emergency room physician and shares an insider’s perspective on the fears, frustrations, and responsibilities linked with one of society’s most highly regarded occupations.

“I wanted to write about the way in which a person changes as they become a physician — how their world view shifts, and how they become a slightly different version of themselves in the process of becoming a doctor,” Lam explains. “I wanted to write about the reality that doing good and trying to help others is not simple. It is ethically complicated and sometimes involves a reality that can only be expressed by telling a story.”

In the book’s first story, “How to Get into Medical School, Part 1,” students Ming and Fitz wrestle with their opposing personalities and study techniques, while coming to terms with a growing emotional connection that elicits disapproval from Ming’s traditional Chinese-Canadian parents. Lam’s exceptional talent for describing scenarios with great precision is showcased in “Take All of Murphy,” when Ming, Chen, and Sri find themselves at a moral crossroads while dissecting a cadaver. Throughout the book, readers are treated to the physicians’ internal thoughts and the mental drama involved with treating patients, including Fitz’s struggle with self-doubt in “Code Clock” and Chen’s boredom and exhaustion in “Before Light.”

From delivering babies to evacuating patients and dealing with deadly viruses, the four primary characters in Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures are made thoroughly human by Lam’s insightful detail, realistic dialogue, and expert storytelling. The medical world is naturally filled with drama, but it’s the author’s ability to give equal weight to the smaller moments that really brings this book to life.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #872206 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-26
• Released on: 2006-09-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 355 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Lam's Giller Prize–winning debut, a veritable cornucopia of interesting characters, voices and effects, presents a formidable burden for a single reader. Through the four main sleep-deprived characters, we wind our way through med school and beyond. Lane sculpts a precise and colorful aural identity for every character, regardless of their significance. A master of capturing nuances in vocal personality, he ranges from a strong, stiff Chinese-American accent to a lisping, muttering paranoid schizophrenic in a heartbeat, and nothing seems forced. At one point, a doctor speaking to a patient in German-accented Hindi influenced English he learned in Bombay seems like an narrator's bar bet or a challenge from the author. But Lane pulls it off perfectly, with grace and pluck. Occasionally, Lane's conjuring is amped up with unnecessary special effects (a hollow distortion when dialogue is heard over the phone) that would be distracting if both the author and the reader were anything less than solid and riveting. The combination of Lane and Lam is a winning one, a performance not to be missed.
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From Bookmarks Magazine
Vincent Lam joins the ranks of doctor-writers with his award-winning debut novel. Compared to the popular TV dramas Grey's Anatomy, House, and ER, Bloodletting (set to become a Canadian TV drama itself) offers an intriguing look at na•ve doctors' lives and aspirations while showcasing the humanity and daily dilemmas they face. In both humorous and worst-case scenarios, Lam depicts how students plot their way into med school, develop strange ties to cadavers, break terrible news to patients' families, second-guess all their actions, collaborate against their consciences, and deal with life-threatening illnesses of their own. Although a few critics cited flat dialogue, Bloodletting offers a compelling and insightful view of the medical profession.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
Lam's debut collection, a Canadian best-seller, unblinkingly captures the angst, personal and professional, of four University of Ottawa med students as they wend their ways from classroom to residency. The trials of Ming, Sri, Chen, and Fitz ricochet from heartbreaking to darkly humorous with precious little downtime in between. Alternating omniscience and the first-person musings of Chen, Lam uses the stories to plumb the four's good, bad, and ugly characteristics. Ming, the only woman, and Fitz try to sublimate and end up sabotaging their love for one another as they study for exams; Ming moves on. Sri becomes so personally attached to patients that at one point he begins to wonder whether it is he or a paranoid patient who is the true psychotic. Although Chen makes a Herculean effort to maintain tight control over his own humanity, he, too, struggles to keep private concerns separate from concomitant professional life-and-death decisions. Lam won a richly deserved Giller Prize for this tender, grisly, sad, funny, illuminating book. Chavez, Donna

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Customer Reviews

Captivating and insightful short story collection
Kurt Vonnegut once wrote that he had trouble ending short stories in ways that would satisfy a general public. The dilema of how to end a short story and not leave the reader feeling unfulfilled is an enourmous challenge for any writer. Admittedly, I felt unfulfilled by some of the stories in Vincent Lam's Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures, but for the most part I found this collection facinating and highly entertaining.

Lam draws on his own experience as an emergency room physician and provides an insider's view into the challenges of medical school and the demands of being a physician. Lam introduces the reader to four young medical students and follows them through twelve loosely woven stories. Readers expecting Bloodletting to resemble a novel, where each story is linked to the last may be disappointed. The first three stories follow this format, but while each story does feature at least one of the four young doctors, there is little connection between the remaining 9 stories.

Like all short story collections, some are better than others. The strongest stories (`Eli', `Night Flight', and `Before Light') are the ones that explore how ethically complicated being a physician can be. Lam's writing is fresh, insightful, and often touched with humor. I particularly enjoyed the movie scenes that Fritz imagines, while longing for his former girlfriend in `How to Get in Medical School Part II', and the highly entertaining story of Chen's grandfather in a `Very Long Migration' (which sounds like it may be the basis for Lam's first novel).

While a little uneven at times, overall Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures is a captivating, insightful look at the complicated, challenging, and emotionally draining world of medicine. I look forward to Lam's debut novel.

No Other Book Like It
I first heard of this book when I read about it winning Canada's top literary prize--I thought it unusual that a full-time doctor could write such acclaimed fiction, so I asked a Toronto friend to send me a copy and I'm glad this is now out in the States. The stories are beautiful, intelligent, and often darkly humorous in a way that reminded me of Nathan Englander, Jhumpa Lahiri, David Schickler, and Adam Haslett. But what sets this apart is how it takes you deep into the world of doctors--how they feel and think in relation to each other and their patients. It follows four young doctors during medical school and then into their early careers. There's romance, crazy patients, tense ER moments, mundane patient/doctor conversations that take on a deeper meaning. Really just everything a doctor might encounter, seen through their eyes. This lingered with me much longer than any episode of ER, HOUSE, or Grey's Anatomy ever did--definitely worth a look!

Below Average
Dr. Vincent Lam is a physician not only in my hometown but at the hospital a few blocks from my house. My hometown bias was ready to like this book.

This is a series of short stories about doctors as they progress from med school through various stages of their careers. The characters are connected but, for the most part, each story stands on its own.

Dr. Lam does give an interesting depiction of life as a doctor including the sleep deprivation, cynical attitudes, genuine caring and complete obsession.

A few of the stories are great. I especially liked the troubled delivery and one about the doctors with SARS. There are several complete throwaway stories as well.

In the end, I think Lam misses the mark on character depth. We don't really get to know what drives these characters other than what one could see in any TV show. The characters are cliched and very difficult to care about.

Though parts of the book were exciting, I doubt I will think much about this book again.