Medicine Men

by Alice Adams

Book Overview

A satirical romp in the spirit of Jane Austen, Medicine Men takes a humorous yet touching look at love, friendship, economic class, and family heritage. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679454403
• ISBN13: 9780679454403
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.0" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

A delightful, biting satire

Medicine Men was my introduction to the wonderful world of Alice Adams. It was with the greatest sadness that I finished reading her complete works. Ms. Adams is indeed a modern-day Jane Austen. She chronicles the lives, loves, and angst of the "upper crust." Her satire on the medical establishement in Medicine Men is priceless -- Raleigh Sanderson is the ultimate brilliant, egomaniacal, and totally self-absorbed surgeon. Molly and Felicia are bright, funny, talented women who are just ditzy and vulnerable enough to be totally engaging. Medicine Men is hardly a chronicle of modern cancer treatment. And if all your encounters with doctors have been sublime and reverential, you won't get it. But if you've ever dated, married, had an affair with, or been the patient of a less than perfect physician, you will find enough stereotypical truth in the likes of Raleigh, Dave, and Mark to be delightfully amused, entertained, and perhaps touched.

Yet another look at some of Adams' "superior women"

Alice Adams always, always brings us face to face with superior women even when they are not in her book of the same name. Adams' women bond with one another and learn they can survive -- nay, even thrive -- in the hostile, male-dominated world we are all familiar with. Molly Bonner and Felicia Flood are the women, and the hostile world is that created by "medicine men." It's a world where Doctor is Always Right -- even when HE isn't. I recall my first trip to a Kaiser Ob/Gyn at the onset of menopause. Without comment, HE wrote out a prescription and handed it to me. "What is this?" I asked. "It's a prescription for estrogen," he replied. Note that he never explained the pros and cons of the drug; he never inquired of my medical history to determine that I might not be a candidate for estrogen. (I wasn't, in fact.) He never told me the purpose of the drug. In short, he treated me like most doctors treat women. The fact that Alice Adams sees the world of medical men as a world worth feminist exploration and exposure indicates to me that not much has changed since my Ob/Gyn experience. Well, no, one thing has changed: we now have writers like Alice Adams and Marge Piercy and others who help us to know it isn't we who have the problem. And it never was.