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The Heart Specialist (2011)

by Claire Holden Rothman(Favorite Author)

3.54 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1569479453 (ISBN13: 9781569479452)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Soho Press

review 1: I really liked this novel, especially the fact that it is strongly based on the real life of one of Canada's first female doctors, Maude Abbott. Whenever I read a book like this I can't help but imagine how frustrated women such as Abbott were when they were denied entrance to university or prohibited from pursuing a career simply because they were female. This is a good novel for anyone interested in either Canadian history, or women's history.
review 2: I had a hard time rating this book--couldn't decide between 3 stars, or 4. I was hooked at the beginning, liked it all through the middle, with one exception, but I found myself disappointed with the ending. I appreciated the struggle that the heroine endured, trying and trying to be trained and then practic... moree as a female doctor. I was disappointed that she so easily gave up her fight to practice, settling instead for a lower position, but the book is based on the life of a true person, so perhaps that was the actual path taken. Although the ending left me unsatisfied, I think it is just because I wanted a happy ending for the heroine, but often books are better off without one and maybe that was the case here. There was a happiness at the end, just not the overall big one that I had hoped for. To the author's credit, it was well done and I cannot imagine a different ending that would improve the novel. My only other criticism was that huge periods of time were not directly explained, which is the writing style--Rothman instead uses dates to show the timeline, but because I came to like the heroine, I wanted to more about her and found myself wondering what happened to her in between the narrative gaps. less

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