The Surgical Arena

This aimless, flatfooted first novel is a good source of information for anyone considering a career in medicine, but not successful as fiction. In an often melodramatic narrative, surgeon Peter Grant describes the day-to-day struggles of a heroic surgeon named . . . Peter Grant. The names of the patients and descriptions of the cases have all been altered, Dr. Grant assures us, and his story also features fictional episodes, places and characters. (Readers will doubtless hope that he invented the horrifying first scene, in which a handful of operating room nurses compare notes on botched surgeries they've observed.) Grant takes us along on teaching rounds, consultations with patients, sessions in intensive care and in the OR, where a slip of the hand can mean the difference between life and death. He goes to great lengths to explain the challenges and opportunities surgeons face, everything from socialized health care, frivolous malpractice suits and patients who cannot pay, to wondrous developments in minimally invasive laparascopic surgery. He is at his best when describing his work and, unsurprisingly, at his worst when trying to develop a plot. (Oct.)