#23 - The Good Doctor

There's nothing I love more than a good South African piece of fiction. It's a strange thing to say, I know, but Damon Galgut's The Good Doctor, with its shades of Coetzee, reads like an exquisite piece of literary art. The parallels to Coetzee's work are well documented. Almost every reviewer brings it up as a point from which to discuss Galgut's work.

The story of an older, almost-divorced doctor who works at a nearly abandoned hospital in a former township, The Good Doctor examines the idea of moral ambiguity almost perfectly. Presenting us with a character we can neither love nor hate, we inevitably find ourselves deeply engaged by him anyway. As a young, upstart (...inky pup! I always think, damn you Shakespeare in Love) doctor wends his way both into the life of the protagonist, Frank, and into the routine of the hospital, his whole world changes.

While there is no outward conflict between the two men, there is a deep sense that things will never be the same; it's a subtle change that time brings, one that comes with a strange subsection of events that have both a cause and an effect, but are so indicative of something post-colonial that it's refreshingly disturbing to read. Highly recommend it on a rainy day where you were already feeling bad about reading the frightening stats in your newspaper (for example: one in four adults in Zimbabwe have HIV. The US uses 25% of the world's oil resources, etc) and want a deep, interesting novel to keep you company for a while.