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The Disagreement: A Novel (2008)

by Nick Taylor(Favorite Author)

3.4 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1416550658 (ISBN13: 9781416550655)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Simon & Schuster

review 1: I received an Advanced Reading Copy of this book a while back while I worked at Borders and finally got around to reading it. It's a fairly light read, a story of a young Virginian who seeks to enter the medical profession against his father's wishes at the outbreak of the Civil War. Appropriately grim at some times, this was nevertheless an enjoyable enough book, good enough to help me get through a rainy day . . .
review 2: A charming first novel on a fascinating topic--what was it like to be a first year student at the University of Virginia, interested in a career in medicine, in 1861? The chapters are many and usually quite short, so it reads a bit like a screenplay with dialogue rather than a more conventional work of historical fiction. I found myself ... morecaught up in the drama of the characters' lives, and the hero's girlfriend and college roommate were both intriguing in their capabilities and activities. The most interesting components for me were the description of the situation for the patients in the university's emergency hospital wards, wounded or suffering soldiers, and the strategies the staff adopted to cope as wartime made medical supplies increasingly scarce. The epilogue suggests what happened to all central characters from the vantage of many years later, and for some reason brought to my mind both the end of the Harry Potter series and a biography on the artist Thomas Eakins I read many years ago--the former, because of tone and tying up loose ends, the latter for the inclusion of both Dr. Gross and oarsmen on the Schuylkill. less

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