Book Doctor: A Novel

by Esther Cohen and Esther Cohen

Book Overview

Inspired by the frustrations of writer's block, the vagaries of modern romance, and a deep-seated love for reading, The Book Doctor combines urbane, sophisticated, mordantly funny storytelling with... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582433232
• ISBN13: 9781582433233
• Release Date: December 2004
• Publisher: Counterpoint
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.9" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Hilarious and heart-warming

They say everyone has a book in them. I doubt it, but everyone seems to believe it's true and many of these people contact Arlette Rosen for help turning their mush into mansucripts and their manuscripts into saleable books. The novel charts the comic and suprising relationship between Arlette and Harbinger Singh, a tax lawyer who's a tuneful, oddball determined to use a book to either win back his estranged wife--or smite her. His and Arlette's relationship gets very complicated very quickly and takes surprising turns. Now, the book is punctuated with mock query letters from a wide variety of wanna-be writers and though they are often ludicrous, the book never takes cheap shots. Here's where the author's great success lies: she can mock silly, self-absorbed people with loony ideas for books without mocking their very real desire to communicate, to express themselves, to share ideas with the world. The book is satire, but it's never vicious, it's actually warm and charming. A lesser author would have been unable to walk this tightrope, but Cohen does so beautifully.

Tax Man As Writer / Hero

Those of us who "do taxes" have a hard time finding heros of our profession. "Doing taxes" correctly is to approve and critique a client's life--since money is taken as a value assessment of what one does. Book Doctor Arlette Rosen takes on tax guy Harbinger Singh to help him write his book. But it is Singh, a true "doer of taxes" who critiques the values of Arlette's life. At one point, Arlette proclaims "Harbinger is art." Ah! A high point of my profession when a client says I am at the level of art! Esther Cohen's Book Doctor made me laugh. The book proprosals alone are worth the read: from an Alzheimers joke book to a book by a woman married to a gorilla. (Her employer thought she was single until she showed up at the Christmas party with Otto.) A great read for any "writer of books" or "doer of taxes" or everyone else too.

Not since Proust...

Well, Proust has nothing to do with it, of course, no more than Victor Hugo, or Joyce. Esther Cohen is very much her own writer, enormously intelligent, thoughtful, and original. With very small strokes, almost pointilist in their precision, she reveals her characters, and, lo, we have met them before, not in the pages of someone else's fiction, but beside us on the bus, in the corridors of the buildings in which we work, and -- it must be said -- in our very own mirrors. These are totally human characters, involved in the stuff of daily life, mainly with how to proceed with life when the guidelines of fiction offer so little help. "Love," as it exists in the day to day is a million times more involving and confusing than even Tolstoy suggests, but somehow Ms. Cohen brings forward all these complexities and lays them out like tonight's pajamas, mundane but warming. This is a wonderful book, surprising on evey page, definitely the debut of a voice we shall encounter again. Did I say, I laughed and laughed throughout the book? And more, I continue to laugh, just in reflecting on it!

Rx: Read This!

I'm prescribing "Book Doctor" mainly because Esther Cohen is a masterful comic writer. But I loved this book on many levels. It's about our human drive to find an audience: to hear our stories, to receive our message, to benefit from what we think we know. I cared about Book Dr. Arlette and her perfectly drawn clients, especially, Harginber Singh, who wants to write a book for vengenance and for love, and who surprised and delighted me at every turn. Writer Eudora Welty referred to "elucidating moments," which offer readers an "Aha!" insight...someone's look of disdain or envy, a habit revealed, a yearning suppressed. Such tidbits nail a character and make for a rich read. The only other living novelist I've found who does this with Cohen's skill is Allegra Goodman ("Kaatershill Falls," etc.) If you like Goodman, you'll love Cohen. If you haven't read either, I wish I were you, embarking upon my advice to read both.

Funny and Touching

I just finished reading Book Doctor. It's an amazing novel, both funny and touching, and I already miss all the main characters and wish I knew what the next few years would be like for them. If they weren't just part of this author's wonderful imagination, I'd figure out how to meet them, because I know I could be friends with them---especially Arlette Rosen, the book doctor, because she has a great sense of humor and is open to making changes in her life and also Harbinger Singh, because he has a very adventurous spirit----and I would love going out for coffee with them or taking in a movie and dinner and talking about what's really going on in their lives. Esther Cohen's characters are so compelling, so believable and charming, you just don't want the book to end.