Review: In a House of Dreams and Glass

This book is Klitzman's memoir of his time in residency, training as a psychiatrist. There are many memoirs of medical training in print, and this one does bear some similarities to the others, but there is plenty of original content too. Like most memoirs of residency, Klitzman's training brings into stark relief the inadequacies of the mental health system, and the inability of well-meaning practitioners to deliver the best medical care.

Some of the issues, dealing with insurance companies, nurses, and other doctors are shared across disciplines. But psychiatry presents a whole new set of issues, and Klitzman's treatment of these make this book well worth reading. While medical memoirs are full of tales of senior doctors mistreating students, the psychiatrists seemed to be using their students as experiments. Klitzman notes that residents were frequently treated like patients. Where Klitzman is at his most eloquent is in his discussion of the difficulties of treating the mind, rather than the body. Serving a patient population that does not necessarily want to get well, navigating disagreements about drug vs. behavioral therapy, these issues provide new challenges Klitzman had not faced in treating the body.

This is a well-written, passionate memoir. Much has changed in psychiatry in the fifteen years since this was published. Prozac was the new wonder drug when Klitzman was writing. This is still a book well-worth reading. The drugs may have changed, but many of the issues remain.

Robert Klitzman, In a House of Dreams and Glass: Becoming a Psychiatrist (Simon and Schuster, 1995) ISBN: 0671734504

Review: My Formerly Hot Life

I am likely the target audience for Dolgoff's memoir/self-help/humor book on getting older. That said, I found it difficult to relate to this book. Dolgoff's inspiration for this book was discovering that people no longer saw her as a young, hot, pick-up-able woman. Instead, she's trying to come to terms with the fact that she's become an average, perhaps boring, mom. Dolgoff's complaints about aging will likely sound familiar to most. Her metabolism has slowed, she can't stay out all night anymore, men no longer try to pick her up on the subway.

The purpose of this book is to let readers know that perhaps it's not all so bad. There are benefits to getting older. The problem is that I'm not sure that Dolgoff is actually convinced that it's going to be okay. It seemed as though the author was caught between feeling she had to present a silver lining and wanting to let her readers know that the cloud actually sucks. I also felt like I couldn't relate to many of Dolgoff's concerns. My friends and I don't have so many difficulties meeting for dinner, and we don't really care if the places we go are considered hot by everyone else. Maybe the issue is that I don't live in Manhattan. Maybe it's that I don't work in fashion.

Ultimately this struck me as a book that doesn't know what it wants to be. It's not funny enough to be a work of humor. It's not deep enough to be a memoir. This seems to be a problem that a number of blogs-to-books face. Some of the material in the book would be interesting and charming as a 1-2 page magazine article, but a 200-page book is overkill. It was difficult for me to get through this book, and I didn't feel like I left it with any additional insight.

Stephanie Dolgoff, My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches from Just the Other Side of Young (Ballantine, 2010) ISBN: 0345521455

Review: 84, Charing Cross Road

I had heard so much about this book before reading it. This is one of those classic texts that all bibliophiles seem to read and adore, so I was thoroughly looking forward to it. Unfortunately, I was not as smitten as most readers seem to be. This slim volume chronicles the correspondence between New Yorker Hanff and the staff of an antiquarian bookstore in London. The entirety of the text is letters, as Hanff cultivates a relationship with the shop's staff, a relationship built entirely on transatlantic correspondence. The second part of the book is comprised of Hanff's memoirs of the trip she was finally able to take to London, sadly after the bookstore, Marks and Co. had closed, and after her primary correspondent had died. Certainly the the letters between Hanff and her primary correspondent, Frank Doel, are touching. The two developed quite a friendship. In the privations of the post-war London of the late-1940s and early 1950s, Hanff sent repeated care packages to the bookstore's staff, providing things completely unavailable in the United Kingdom- basics like eggs (real and powdered), oranges, and women's stockings. It return, Doel and his store provided Hanff with quite a reading list- even the most ardent of bibliophiles will likely be wowed by the density and depth of Hanff's reading list. Those elements aside, I preferred Hanff's memoirs of her time in London to the letters. I drank up her descriptions of the places, though I found it difficult to get interested in the people. In sum, while I found this book charming, it was not the amazing experience I was expecting. Bibliophiles will surely want to read it, but I'm not sure a general audience would find it engaging. In writing this, I feel like a bad voracious reader. I've missed something that makes this book a tremendous experience of other book lovers.

Helene Hanff, 84, Charing Cross Road (Penguin, 1990, reprint) ISBN: 0140143505