Black Flies (2008)

For such a short read this book packs a powerful punch. In Black Flies author Shannon Burke, a former paramedic who worked in Harlem, gives an honest and grim portrait of what Harlem paramedics encounter on a daily basis. It is a dark novel filled with disturbing events of death, gunshot victims, drug addicts and other gruesome things paramedics face while working in a crime-filled, poverty-ridden neighborhood. The book follows Ollie Cross during his first year as a medic and chronicles his daily struggle with the things he sees while treating patients, how he copes, and how he finds that difficult balance between work and his personal life.

Black Flies is a commanding, seemingly true-to-life look into a world that not many people witness. The vivid accounts of roach-invested tenements and people left destitute in the worst and most hopeless of conditions serve as a reminder to appreciate the things you have in your life. The author is formidable and graphic in his descriptions, even grisly at times, but if you can handle the severity I highly recommend reading this book. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. People who work in the medical field or who have an interest in medicine may find this particularly interesting and/or informative, if not disturbing. ( )

It's about a kid slumming it as a paramedic in Harlem while he drags his feet on going to medical school. The reader sees emergency medicine in all its unprofessional, adrenaline-junky-riddled glory. Be prepared to read about "skells" about five hundred times. We know the protagonist won't go over to the dark side because he has an out, but we watch him flirt with it to become the kind of person who feels like more of a man, wiser and more authentic than his girlfriend's wimpy, med school friends.

This book made me feel like a psycho while I was reading it. It's one of those books that inexorably torpedoes your mood. However, it asks good ethics questions and makes you want to punch the faces of your handful of underworked, whacker co-workers who are totally unprofessional, also talk excessively about "skells," and have seemingly no compassion for patients despite never getting shot at, not having to deal with junkies, and not routinely stumbling across decaying corpses on the job.

I dunno, it was good? ( )

The memoir of a paramedic in Harlem, New York. A man trying to get into medical college decides to work as a paramedic and in order to get the most experience possible he works in Harlem. There he meets a lot of strange people, many of them working for the paramedics.

It's an interesting account of one man's life at the front line of medicine and what being a paramedic can do to a person, how it can change them because in order to be able to cope with the tragedy and terror you have to become somewhat numb to it all. ( )

http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=Black_Flies_by_Shannon_Burke ( )

Reality porn mixed with a coming-of-age tale. But really a lot better than that description makes it sound. ( )