[READ: January 20, 2023] Doctors & Nurses
When I requested Sweet Desserts, I also requested Doctors & Nurses. I didn’t know the order of her books, I just picked the two that were the first ones on the list.
Doctors & Nurses is similar to Sweet Desserts in that it is short (although it is actually 50 pages longer) and has short chapters. But otherwise it is very different. Desserts was a fairly serious book about two sisters (and a lot of sex). This book is a farcial romp (with a lot of sex).
Comments online said the cover looked like a chick lit book, but it looks to me more like a cartoon from Playboy from the 1970s.
And it kind of reads like that too.
While Sweet Desserts bounced back and forth between past and present and the focus shifted between the main character and her sister, this story focuses pretty squarely on Jen, a fat nurse who is misanthropic and really seems to hate everyone.
There is one notable and peculiar thing about this book that is never addressed nor explained. Every pages has SEVERAL words that are written in all capital LETTERS for, and I’m not trying to be obtuse about this, no reason that I can READILY determine. I admit that I didn’t put a lot of TIME into trying to figure it out, BUT it is very peculiar.
The book opens with a scene of a rock and a gorge and the rock perpetually invading the gorge’s precious space. It’s remarkably graphic sexually, as far as a rock and a gorge can have sex that is.
But that has nothing to do with the rest of the story (until the every end) which is about a nurse named Jen. Jen is angry most of the time (the list of thing she hates is extensive). And the tone is set pretty early.
Jen has been raped enough to know that all men hate her, the last time DRUGGED, so that she woke to find scratches on her inner thighs and had to GUESS the rest. Nobody BELIEVED her. Too FAT to be believed, too fat to be LISTENED to.
She has arrived in a rural backwater where she applies for a job with a local GP. It’s a comedy of errors as he assumes she is a patient. Then she recognizes him as the man who stopped a madwoman on the plane that she was on from California–he saved the whole plane from this psycho as was decidedly a hero. Jen was so attracted to his heroism that as soon as the hubbub died down, they were in the loo and he was “clutching at Jen’s enormous ass with the compulsive gestures of a hero in the throes of passion.”
They never exchanged names and its unclear if he ever saw her face.
Ellman’s books have chapters that are weird and funny but have little to do with the plot. Like the chapter called Jen’s Body that goes into great detail about her body:
Jen’s kidney’s are full of tiny TUBES, so many tubes! Each of her kidneys has thousands of NEPHRONS….
There’s also a chapter which is primarily a list of all of he things we would no longer have to worry about if we did not have a body.
sepsis
jaundice
comas
pregnancy
that runs for twelve pages.
Jen’s job is boring and is mostly paperwork. But the doctor is so insanely handsome–men respected him and women lusted for him–that it seems to make it okay.
But it soon becomes clear that the doctor is a terrible doctor.
It was like fucking VAUDEVILLE in there!
PATIENT I come about me knee, doctor. It hurts when I bend it, and I can’t cross me legs no more.
Dr. LEWIS: Well, don’t cross them! NEXT!
There’s a whole chapter of all of the misdiagnoses that Dr. Lewis has done–and how many patients he has inadvertently killed.
Eventually, Jen and Dr. Lewis start having an affair. In a very funny subplot of sorts, we learn that Jen collects handbags, imaging each one to be a woman and pointing all of her anger toward that woman into the handbag that represents her. It turns out Dr. Lewis also has a thing for handbags. This leads to mad love for them.
The wedding is a typically crazy affair. There’s a lot of personal baggage which is all pretty funny. Jen had alienated so many people, but she has to invite SOMEONE to the wedding.
But this is where the real drama happens. Someone objects to the wedding and we learn about a double life that sheds some light on earlier events.
So Jen flees to the location of their honeymoon to be alone for their wedding night. She doesn’t really have any other clothes so she winds up roaming the vacation area in a wedding dress, sleeping under the stars and eventually disrobing completely and wandering around naked.
She then returns to work to deal with what waits for her–which is quite shocking–as suddenly there is evidence of murder. And Jen, being FAT is the prime suspect.
It’s a crazy romp which has some remarkably disgusting moments. Ellmann does not shy away from the shock value.
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