“It’s not what you call yourself, Doctor Laverty; it’s what you do that counts here.”

Dear Becca, 

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that AN IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR by Patrick Taylor wasn’t my favorite book. However, it was a different read for me (in a good way, I think) and I’m thankful for the variety that you’re adding to my reading repertoire. 

"Inside the Dirty Duck" by Taylor's partner Dorothy Tinman

In general, AN IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR was too slow for my taste. It was easy to pick up the story, but also much too easy to set it down. I wasn’t particularly invested in what was going on because I didn’t feel like there was a real engaging plot here. The reading moved quickly but I should have finished this book in much less than the week/week and a half that it actually took me.  Unfortunately, I usually didn’t feel that urge to keep going and find out what happens next. 

That said… Taylor first wrote about the citizens of Ballybucklebo in his monthly column in Stitches: The Journal of Medical Humour. When someone suggested that the characters would make a good novel, he took all his material and pieced together a novel with everyone’s favorite characters. Thus, I don’t think the point of this novel is really the storyline, but rather to focus on the characters and the community. And Taylor does exceedingly well at that. Actually, I think I would have enjoyed this novel more if I had read it in its original form as a column each month. It would be so fun to sit down and read about these characters once a month for fifteen minutes. 

I’m not surprised that this made you think of Professor Dobbins. However, neither Dr. Laverty nor Dr. O’Reilly struck me as lazy characters. Dr. O’Reilly goes out of his way to check up on his patients whereas a lazier character would have just stayed home. Even Dr. Laverty sometimes wonders why Dr. O’Reilly goes to so much trouble. If anything, I thought Dr. O’Reilly was somewhat of a workaholic. He reminded me a little bit of my dad, who’s also a doctor, and goes far and beyond the call of a typical doctor when it comes to his patients. He has been known to make house calls and attend patients’ birthday parties or other social functions simply because he cares about them on a deeper, human level. I think that’s really special. So I didn’t find Dr. O’Reilly to be lazy at all. When I think lazy, I think of Seamus Galvin, one of Dr. O’Reilly’s patients. He squanders the money that his wife saved up for their move to California and had me wanting to pull my hair out with frustration. 

It must be a lot of fun for Taylor to return to these characters time and time again. I would love to have a set of characters that readers are so attached to and that you know so intimately and can keep re-visiting. I think Taylor has done a wonderful job; it’s simply not my preferred genre. 

Til we read again!

Megan