Gabriel Weston

So you want to learn Anatomy? Better pick a different book. Oh, depending on your current knowledge, you may well pick up some basics, and a few details, here and there. But that's not the purpose of this book. It aims to give a humanistic view of anatomy; to inject emotion, subjectivity, anecdote, and diversity into a sterile environment. It certainly succeeds.

If you want something cuddly ,comfortable, and bloodless, you also need to pick a different book. Gabriel Weston is a surgeon, and a show more curious one at that. She attends all sorts of operations, and takes us with her as organs are transplanted, excess blood removed from her son's brain, a young male body is transformed into a female one... She takes us with her showing us more than we would see if we were there. If medical terminology upsets you, she uses a lot more than I can understand.

So why 4*? Because she does succeed in taking us with her to make the whole thing seem human. show less

Dirty Work by Gabriel Weston tells the story of a young surgeon who badly botches an operation. As she waits for a hospital committee to decide her fate, and as her patient lies in critical care, she thinks back over her childhood and her training. Nancy is a reclusive and hesitant person whose only personal ties are to her sister and her sister's family. Without friends in the hospital in which she works, she's less able to withstand the uncertainty that comes with having made a mistake. show more

Nancy is an OB GYN surgeon, and along with her other tasks, she routinely performs abortions. She and her mentor regard them as part of their natural duties, but part of her isolation at the hospital stems from the low-level harassment she undergoes from her co-workers who leave doll parts in her locker and make her life more difficult in small ways. Dirty Work addresses her reasons for performing these unpopular procedures.

While the subject matter was interesting and there is certainly a dearth of novels that address abortion, or the pressures of being fallible in life and death situations, the book was more focused on the issues raised than it was in character development or setting. Still, it packed a lot into a slender novel. show less

I like interesting and unusual books and this one is so unusual that I wasn't sure how to process it. It combines the logical, scientific world of medicine and anatomy with the world of the humanities and creativity in the world of one person who process everything through both sides of the brain and then adds a spin of becoming a patient and seeing the whole world differently.

The text states there are 206 different pieces of the skeleton - and I think the author names everyone of them - show more that is the science piece.

Then the humanities piece shows up in random places..."the dead body, the place where all anatomical explorations begin....Her precise stillness feels ungraspable, her lifeless absolute."

The chapters are divided into body systems taking the reader through the whole body one piece at a time one human problem at a time.

I didn't read the book all the way through -- I choose chapters randomly and skimmed through -- sometimes laying the book aside confused and dazed at the amount of information being fed through my brain -- and then seeing it laying there a day or two later, retrieving it and giving it another try because the content and format left me wondering what more there was to see and read.

I have placed the title back in my To Be Read pile and it will resurface at a later date and I will give it another go. show less

Direct Red is a collection of stories drawn from Gabriel Weston’s experiences while training and working as a surgeon in the UK.

The opening page finds her near collapse from exhaustion (and tedium) while in her seventh hour of assisting on an OR case. Desperate to not admit vulnerability in front of her colleagues, she resorts to a private mantra -- recalling the names of tissue stains that fascinated her back in medical school: Methylene blue, Acridine orange, Malachite green, Tyrian show more purple ... Direct red. This list rouses her back to clarity in the OR and launches her series of stories set at other precipices of vulnerability, represented by theme-based chapters: Speed, Sex, Death, Voices, Beauty, Hierarchy, Territory, Emergencies, Ambition, Help, Children, Appearances, Changes, and Home.

The book’s description likens Weston to Atul Gawande (Complications, Better), but while they both write patient-centered stories of medicine and surgery, their content and styles differ markedly. Gawande is a master essayist, using the clinical case as a jumping-off point for deep explorations of the science, history and ethics of practice. Weston is a compelling storyteller whose clinical cases are the story -- full of tension, emotion and keen observation.

Despite having spent my career in healthcare, the book surprised and informed me, and I devoured it in a day. show less