New Admissions: Tales of life, death & love 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.

In New Zealand, we have a rash of doctors-turned-writers.

There’s haematologist Dr Eileen Merriman, who recently published her second adult novel after several successful YA books.

More established is GP Glen 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 Harris. New Admissions is her second self-published book, following from Admissions, eight stories about hospital life with female central characters.

This second volume is slight, around 70 pages, comprised of four stories set firmly in 2020 through the Covid-19 pandemic.

Each is subtitled with the names of two characters who will take centre stage and proceed clearly and simply from that helpful clue. The protagonists are young, old, male, female and all are in some way connected to hospital, whether by profession or admission. Harris lives in Dunedin, where she is an obstetrician and gynaecologist, a fact that readers may glean from the story Labours of Love, which depicts, graphically, a womb turned insideout by a too-vigorous placenta extraction.

The first story seems only a short step away from non-fiction, with a reportagestyle 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,’’ Harris writes.

Central character Mandy is an overburdened 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 from a hospital co-worker, who references the ‘‘Asian invasion’’.

Co-main character is Brittany, who doesn’t stand for any s... and is full of Millennial sentiments such as, ‘‘Guilt is a lifestyle choice, not a fundamental emotion.’’

Also, she believes in passion, prime progenitor of guilt. Jazz has demanding immigrant parents who expect her to study hard and qualify as a dentist or doctor, as they did. Harris’ long association with 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 for more.

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 Harris 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.

This review was originally published by Kete at ketebooks.co.nz and is reproduced with permission.