Review: New Admissions - Tales of life, love & death in the time of lockdown
Anton Chekov, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Michael Crichton, William Carlos Williams and Somerset Maugham were all, famously, doctors who also wrote. Gertrude Stein almost joined their ranks but dropped out of medical school before she graduated.
Just now in New Zealand, we have a rash of doctors-turned-writers. Most current is haematologist Dr Eileen Merriman, who recently published her second adult novel after several successful YA books. More established is GP Glenn Colquhoun, a well-respected poet, children’s author and essayist. Paediatrician Renee Liang is a prolific playwright, poet and essayist. All of these doctors are still practising medicine. We can only marvel at their energy and commitment.
Newer to the ranks is Mira Harrison. New Admissions is her fourth book and follows on from Admissions, eight stories about hospital life with female central characters, published by Steele Roberts Aotearoa in 2018. This volume is slight, comprised of four stories set firmly in 2020 through the Covid pandemic. Each is subtitled with the names of two characters who will take centre-stage and proceed clearly and simply from that helpful clue. Variously the protagonists are young, old, male, female and all are in some way connected to hospital, whether by profession or admission. Harrison, lives in Dunedin and is a former obstetrician gynaecologist, a fact readers may glean from the story Labours of Love, which depicts, graphically, a womb turned inside-out by a too-vigorous placenta extraction.
The first story seems only a short step away from non-fiction, with a reportage style account to remind us, if one was needed, of appalling behaviour in supermarkets at the onset of the pandemic. “This was the time of panic and greed,” Harrison writes. Central character Mandy is an over-burdened nurse and mother, generally pissed off with husband Craig, who does little to help around the house. It is a feminist kitchen-sink story that swerves to contrived romance in the last few paragraphs when she discovers she has given more than just kisses to a young lover.
Jazz in the second story North and South is from Auckland, studying health sciences in Dunedin and working part-time in the hospital kitchen. The fact that she is ethnically Chinese is clumsily imparted by a racist remark by a hospital co-worker, who references the “Asian invasion”. Co-main character is Brittany, who doesn’t stand for any shit and is full of millennial sentiments such as, “Guilt is a life-style choice, not a fundamental emotion.” Also, she believes in passion, prime progenitor of guilt. Being Chinese, Jazz has, of course, demanding immigrant parents who expect her to study hard and qualify as a dentist or doctor, as they did. Harrison’s long observation of medical professionals allows her wry observations, such as Jazz’s father wearing his dentist’s day off jacket, which are enjoyable and leave the reader wishing there were more of them.
The stories improve as the book progresses, each of them heart-felt, strongly feminist and with an over-riding theme of loneliness in lockdown. But none are outstanding or particularly memorable. It could be that Harrison wanted the book on the shelves while the lockdowns were still fresh in readers’ minds but perhaps it would have been better to wait until the volume was less anaemic and to have approached a publisher with a full collection.
Reviewed by Stephanie Johnson
