| View Larger Image | Oxygen: A Novel | Paperbackby Carol Cassella (Author)
| List Price: | $15.00 | | Price: | $10.20 | | You Save: | $4.80 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Simon & Schuster | | Edition: | Reprintth Edition | | Page Count: | 320 Pages | | Publication Date: | June 09, 2009 | | Sales Rank: | 15,386th |
|
FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9781416556114
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
- Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
|
EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
With the compassion of Jodi Picoult and the medical realism of Atul Gawande, Oxygen is a riveting new novel by a real-life anesthesiologist, an intimate story of relationships and family that collides with a high-stakes medical drama.Dr. Marie Heaton is an anesthesiologist at the height of her profession. She has worked, lived and breathed her career since medical school, and she now practices at a top Seattle hospital. Marie has carefully constructed and constricted her life according to empirical truths, to the science and art of medicine. But when her tried-and-true formula suddenly deserts her during a routine surgery, she must explain the nightmarish operating room disaster and face the resulting malpractice suit. Marie's best friend, colleague and former lover, Dr. Joe Hillary, becomes her closest confidante as she twists through depositions, accusations and a remorseful preoccupation with the mother of the patient in question. As she struggles to salvage her career and reputation, Marie must face hard truths about the path she's chosen, the bridges she's burned and the colleagues and superiors she's mistaken for friends.A quieter crisis is simultaneously unfolding within Marie's family. Her aging father is losing his sight and approaching an awkward dependency on Marie and her sister, Lori. But Lori has taken a more traditional path than Marie and is busy raising a family. Although Marie has been estranged from her Texas roots for decades, the ultimate responsibility for their father's care is falling on her.As her carefully structured life begins to collapse, Marie confronts questions of love and betrayal, family bonds and the price of her own choices. Set against the natural splendor of Seattle, and inside the closed vaults of hospital operating rooms, Oxygen climaxes in a final twist that is as heartrending as it is redeeming. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 178 reviews)
|
Great idea by Linda Rockhill  3 Stars
November 29, 2009
The story started out intriguing and grabbed me right away, then seemed to die. I was almost a third of the way through the book before it really piqued my interest again. In between it was mostly dialog about day to day life mixed in with some family drama that didn't really go anywhere and did not hold my interest. After this the story did build at a nice pace and was engrossing, suspenseful, and at times a page turner. The book was well written and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the behind the scene details of how operating rooms work and the role the anesthesiologist plays in surgery; written in layman terms this thread added tension and pulled you in emotionally. The author is a practicing anesthesiologist, which explains why these descriptions felt realistic. I also loved her insight on how doctors and the medical team feel when things turn out poorly in an operating room, this aspect of the storyline was poignantly written and again very real. I look forward to reading more from this author.
| |
i liked it by Primadona (USA)  4 Stars
November 20, 2009
especially the beginning. I think this book should be given to all who see the money anesthesiologists make and scream "i wanna go into anesthesia". At least they'll see a case gone bad and the politics/legalities (i'm not even sure if that's a word) that come into play when that happens. One eye of this books looks into medicine the other looks into the life of the protagonist. I'll say the beginning was a lot more interesting and got me 'hooked' to it but somewhere in the middle it took me a while to pick up the book again. Overall, i loved the story line, great read for anyone, especially the one who wants to go med school and go into anesthesia.
| |
Well crafted, with real insight. by Jeffrey Matthews (Kansas City, MO USA) 4 Stars
October 27, 2009
It took me a while to get the courage to read this book. I knew what it was about and I thought it would bring back some unpleasant memories. The author, Dr. Cassella, spins a web that is all too real. Her descriptions of our shared profession, anesthesiology, are poetic, inspiring, and accurate. Likewise, her characterization of authority figures bending their morals and personal integrity to the call of the dollar are dead on. She paints an accurate portrait of what really happens in our current health-care delivery system when things go wrong. This is the best medically-related book I have read to date.
| |
nice view into the art of anesthesia by Michael Mulligan (ohio) 4 Stars
September 15, 2009
Interesting story easy to follow good character development. Very true description of events surrounding anesthesia and the operating room. Being an anesthesiologist I emphasize with the main character and wonder if non medical people do as well.
| |
opinion of Oxygen by Z. lavin (springfield,ma) 3 Stars
September 06, 2009
I liked the premise of a physician's dilemma after losing a patient but I understand that an anesthesiologist does not do the full examination of the patient and to think that the hospital allowed her to be the "fall guy" upset me. I saw what is common,--attorneys running to the survivor to sue the doctor. I thought that the answer to the death was too easy and un realistic.
| |
SIMILAR PRODUCTS |
| Somebody Else's Daughter: A Novel
by Elizabeth Brundage (Author)
A taut, complex psychological thriller from the author of The Doctor's Wife
Like The Doctor's Wife - which The Boston Globe called "a compelling read"-Somebody Else's Daughter is a literary page-turner peopled with fascinating and disturbing characters. In the idyllic Berkshires, at the prestigious Pioneer School, there are dark secrets that threaten to come to light. Willa Golding, a student, has been brought up by her adoptive parents in elegant prosperity, but they have fled a...
| 
| The Condition: A Novel (P.S.)
by Jennifer Haigh (Author)
In the summer of 1976, during their annual retreat on Cape Cod, the McKotch family came apart. Now, twenty years after daughter Gwen was diagnosed with Turner's syndrome—a rare genetic condition that keeps her trapped forever in the body of a child—eminent scientist Frank McKotch is divorced from his pedigreed wife, Paulette. Eldest son Billy, a successful cardiologist, lives a life built on secrets and compromise. His brother Scott awakened from a pot-addled adolescence to a...
| 
| Cost: A Novel
by Roxana Robinson (Author)
Julia Lambert, an artist, is spending the summer in her old Maine farmhouse. During a visit from her elderly parents, she hopes to mend complicated relationships with her domineering father, a retired neurosurgeon, and her gentle mother, who is descending into the fog of Alzheimer's. But a shattering revelation intrudes: Julia's son, Jack, has spiraled into heroin addiction. In her attempts to save him, Julia marshals help from her loosely knit clan, but Jack's addiction courses through the...
| 
| More Than It Hurts You: A Novel
by Darin Strauss (Author)
Josh Goldin's happy yet unexamined existence is shattered one morning when his wife, Dori, rushes their eight-month- old son to the emergency room in severe distress. Dr. Darlene Stokes, an African-American physician and single mother, suspects Munchausen by proxy, a rarely diagnosed and controversial phenomenon where a mother intentionally harms her baby. As each of them is forced to confront a reality that has become a nightmare, Darlene, Dori, and Josh are pushed to their breaking...
| 
| Perfect Family: A Novel
by Pam Lewis (Author)
From the acclaimed author of Speak Softly, She Can Hear, a literary page-turner about a proper New England family and the dark secrets that undo them.Pony Carteret -- the lovely headstrong youngest member of the Carteret family -- has always been a strong swimmer. So when she is discovered drowned at the family's summer home on Lake Aral, Vermont, her red hair tangled in an anchor chain and her baby abandoned on shore, her family is stunned by disbelief. As the police conduct their...
|
|
|
