pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

I have been intrigued by the idea of this book for some time now. I have some perspective on Katrina, to begin with. Not that my personal life was profoundly effected, but Houston residents saw the consequences come our way. For one thing, in the form of Katrina evacuees, and for another, because when Hurricane Rita was forecast for us just a few months later, the response was quite different than it might have been if our neighbors to the east had not just been so badly beaten. And then I suppose my interest is piqued as well because I work at a hospital now. Finally, I got to see Anna Deavere Smith perform last month (at the Medical Library Association Annual Conference in Chicago), and she did a short piece on the conditions at Charity Hospital in New Orleans that was – naturally – very moving. So here we are, finally.

Five Days at Memorial begins with an Author’s Note in which Fink describes her research methods (lots of interviews & other primary & secondary materials) and notes that she wasn’t at Memorial during the storm, although she visited later. She makes it clear that this is a journalistic work, and that she has been faithful to what she learned in her research – all dialog in quotations comes from interview, etc. – and that she has made an effort to keep her own reactions (“any book reflects the interwoven interpretations and insights of its author”) clearly delineated from the facts. I appreciate this.

I’d like to share two bits for your book beginning today. First of all, “Part I: Deadly Choices” begins with a quotation:

Blindness was spreading, not like a sudden tide flooding everything and carrying all before it, but like an insidious infiltration of a thousand and one turbulent rivulets which, having slowly drenched the earth, suddenly submerge it completely. – José Saramago, Blindness

And then the Prologue:

At last through the broken windows, the pulse of helicopter rotors and airboat propellers set the summer morning air throbbing with the promise of rescue. Floodwaters unleashed by Hurricane Katrina had marooned hundreds of people at the hospital, where they had now spent four days.

And that, I think, says enough for today.

Filed under: book beginnings | Tagged: health/hospitals, journalism, nonfiction |