Gabriel Weston

Dirty Work by Gabriel Weston tells the story of a young surgeon who badly botches an operation. As she waits for a hospital committee to decide her fate, and as her patient lies in critical care, she thinks back over her childhood and her training. Nancy is a reclusive and hesitant person whose only personal ties are to her sister and her sister's family. Without friends in the hospital in which she works, she's less able to withstand the uncertainty that comes with having made a mistake.

Nancy is an OB GYN surgeon, and along with her other tasks, she routinely performs abortions. She and her mentor regard them as part of their natural duties, but part of her isolation at the hospital stems from the low-level harassment she undergoes from her co-workers who leave doll parts in her locker and make her life more difficult in small ways. Dirty Work addresses her reasons for performing these unpopular procedures.

While the subject matter was interesting and there is certainly a dearth of novels that address abortion, or the pressures of being fallible in life and death situations, the book was more focused on the issues raised than it was in character development or setting. Still, it packed a lot into a slender novel.… (altro)

NOTE: I never received this book as part of the Early Review program. I took it upon myself to borrow it from a local library 2 1/2 years after I was supposed to receive it (July 2014).

When we first meet Nancy Mullion, she is in the middle of a botched abortion. Her patient is bleeding out and she can't stop it. Subsequently, there is a four month medical tribunal; an inquisition where Nancy's actions are scrutinized to determine if she is competent to continue practicing medicine. Throughout her trial, Nancy flashes back to her childhood and the traumas she suffered as a young girl in England. The writing is fuzzy in the flashbacks. Weston purposefully keeps the abuse vague. Here's what we know about the first incident; we know Mullion was a very small child; too small to sit properly on a bar stool or hold a rubber ball in her tiny grasp. Weston emphasizes this point further to say Mullion's hand is so small it cannot encircle the bartender's penis. What? All in all, I thought Dirty Work was very disjointed in plot and character development. Weston is vague beyond being clever but one thing is clear - abortion is a stronger character than Doctor Nancy Mullion.… (altro)