Friday, September 18, 2009

The Mercy Rule / by Perri Klass

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Dr. Lucy Weiss has come a long way. As a child she spent her early years bouncing around various foster homes until ultimately being adopted by one of her teachers. Now a pediatrician, Lucy manages a clinic specializing in care for the disadvantaged and travels the country delivering speeches on the particular medical needs of children under foster care. Also a devoted wife and mother, Lucy's the central figure in the lives of her professor husband, her gifted 10-year-old daughter Isabel and her mildly challenged son Freddy. Lucy's commitments to both her work and her family bring her into contact (and conflict) with seemingly endless series of confrontational issues including what to do when a mother abandons her 3 school-age children, when and how to cross the line of professionalism when dealing with clients and colleagues and what to do about David's increasingly retreative lifestyle.
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Klass, an M.D. as well as an author, delivers another warmhearted but practical novel on the ups and downs of life providing for the medical needs of the less fortunate. Dr. Lucy is a well-rounded character and the supporting cast, though marginalized, present a largely believable scenario. This book doesn't really have a plot; there's no real story arc and situations don't really develop or resolve themselves by the book's end. But it doesn't seem to matter. The novel does fine without any major plot twists and Klass's writing is able to keep readers interested through various anecdotal pieces like Lucy's airplane conversations with a kid being flown from one parent to the other--essentially a modern-age "foster" child, reflections on her own childhood and intriguing conversations between Lucy and her patients.

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