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spenkevich's review against another edition
5.0
‘As one year has passed, so will another, and it will be just as rich in surprises as the first one… And so I have to go on dutifully learning.’
While we are all watching the world attempt to navigate public health, I decided to pick up this little book about a young doctor plunged into a rural district full of locals distrustful of medicine or doctors in general with a small staff battling against an overflow of patients. This might sound...uncomfortably familiar to *gestures wildly at everything right now* but here is A Young Doctor’s Notebook by the great Mikhail Bulgakov. Author of one of my all-time favorite works, The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov based this book on his own life as a young doctor, told here as Dr. Bomgard. Having graduated from medical school in Moscow, Dr. Bomgard and his fresh, eager face are sent to a provincial hospital for a year of baptism by fire. As one would expect with Bulgakov, A Young Doctor’s Notebook is darkly comic and rife with social criticisms as we follow the young doctor, cut-from the world besides a small staff, as he learns that knowledge often cannot take the place of experience. Frustrated by locals who won’t trust him and frantically learning on the fly, this collection of stories becomes a truly uplifting and encouraging book about setting aside imposter syndrome, diving in and saving lives.
‘Clever people have long been aware that happiness is like good health: when you have it, you don't notice it. But as the years go by, oh, the memories, the memories of happiness past!’
Written between 1925-1926 about his time as a doctor in 1917, Bulgakov published these stories in various literary journals but had intended to eventually compile them into one volume. Unfortunately this never occurred within his own lifetime and many of his writings were censored or outright banned under Stalin. This edition, translated by [a:Hugh Aplin|26615|Hugh Aplin|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], also includes a much longer story, Morphine, a deeply personal and autobiographical story detailing Bulgakov’s own addiction to morphine that was separately published as a novel in 1926, as well as a 30 page biography about the author.
‘Forty-eight days ago I graduated with high distinction, but distinction is one thing and hernia is another.’
Much like Bulgakov being sent to Smolensk province after medical school, A Young Doctor’s Notebook opens with Dr. Bomgard arriving in a small provincial hospital seperated from the nearest train station by several miles of what can barely even be considered a road. It is bleak, remote, and far from anything Bomgard knows having grown up well off in Moscow.
Bomgard arrives with a head full of academic knowledge, but no experience and quickly realizes his young features, lack of beard and ‘adolescent gait’ also undermine respect for him amongst the staff and locals. He also is stepping into the shadows of the hospitals previous doctor, the very much revered and heavily bearded Leopold Leopoldovich. Leopoldovich has left behind a considerable library of medical works, which become the bookish Bomgard’s sanctuary and savior in the difficult year to come.
‘Oh dear, if only I could read a bit of Döderlein now!’ the young doctor often thinks as new situations arise, often running back to his room on the pretense of needing a cigarette in order to rapidly turn through textbooks like cramming for an exam. It makes for a charming and relatable read, with the doctor studying how to perform a surgery moments before doing it, or, when about to deliver a complicated pregnancy, being bombarded by warnings of death or other dangerous consequences should he not perform perfectly. ‘From fragmentary words, unfinished phrases, hints dropped in passing,’ he later admits, ‘I learnt those most essential things that are never in any books.’ As his experience grows, so does his confidence and he learns to believe in himself, in his abilities, and to not overthink the mistakes. Which are many, a particularly comical one involving the overzealous pulling of a soldier’s tooth and his days of anxiety that follow.
Bomgard’s struggles definitely hit home and made me also reflect on my early days of employment with a darkly humorous fondness. My first job directly out of university was to work in a sign making factory in a very conservative district outside Grand Rapids. Having just left years of studying, literature, philosophy and political activism were still my favorite topics of conversation which I quickly learned made me quite the weirdo, asshole or potential communist demon depending on who you asked within the factory. There is a line in Steinbeck’s [b:In Dubious Battle|56083|In Dubious Battle|John Steinbeck|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394742698l/56083._SY75_.jpg|1808026] warning the man sent to organize a union that he should never use a word the men don’t understand or he will lose them and their trust. This was a good lesson to learn and adapt, yet, as Bulgakov shows here, sometimes simply knowing something makes you untrustworthy or unliked. Much of the humor in these stories is the superstitions and other excuses locals give for distrusting medicine or the doctor himself. As [a:Michael Glenny|73039|Michael Glenny|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] wrote about Bulgakov, ‘This was the sense of being a lone soldier of reason and enlightenment pitted against the vast, dark, ocean-like mass of peasant ignorance and superstition.’ It can get a bit elitist, mind you, but currently living through a global pandemic where I’m watching my local health dept be protested by armed militia for asking people to wear a mask while a separate protest against vaccines was going on at the hospital...lets just say I was having a sigh and a roll of the eyes along with Bulgakov. The story about trying to stop the spread of syphilis includes a moment when people say they cannot be quarantined because it will impact local businesses. I high-fived Bulgakov and yelled "yea man, I remember that!"
‘In a year I have seen 15,613 patients, I had 200 hospitalized patients, and only six died.’
By the end of the book we see Bomgard having transformed into a confident doctor, which is truly inspiring. Word gets out and he begins having over a hundred patients a day (more than even the late great Leopoldovich). He still makes mistakes but he learns more and more from each moment and each day. In the end, the biggest lesson is to trust in yourself and to always be learning. While this is not the heft and power of [b:The Master and Margarita|117833|The Master and Margarita|Mikhail Bulgakov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327867963l/117833._SY75_.jpg|876183] (honestly what could be though), this is still a fantastic little book and one of my favorites I’ve read this year.
4.5/5
‘And now a whole year has passed. While it lasted it seemed endlessly varied, multifarious, complex and terrible, although I now realise that it has flown by like a hurricane. I stare into the mirror and see the traces that it has left on my face. There is more severity and anxiety in my eyes, the mouth is more confident and manly, while the vertical wrinkle between my eyebrows will remain for a lifetime – as long, in fact, as my memories. I can see them as I look in the mirror, chasing each other in headlong succession.’
While we are all watching the world attempt to navigate public health, I decided to pick up this little book about a young doctor plunged into a rural district full of locals distrustful of medicine or doctors in general with a small staff battling against an overflow of patients. This might sound...uncomfortably familiar to *gestures wildly at everything right now* but here is A Young Doctor’s Notebook by the great Mikhail Bulgakov. Author of one of my all-time favorite works, The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov based this book on his own life as a young doctor, told here as Dr. Bomgard. Having graduated from medical school in Moscow, Dr. Bomgard and his fresh, eager face are sent to a provincial hospital for a year of baptism by fire. As one would expect with Bulgakov, A Young Doctor’s Notebook is darkly comic and rife with social criticisms as we follow the young doctor, cut-from the world besides a small staff, as he learns that knowledge often cannot take the place of experience. Frustrated by locals who won’t trust him and frantically learning on the fly, this collection of stories becomes a truly uplifting and encouraging book about setting aside imposter syndrome, diving in and saving lives.
‘Clever people have long been aware that happiness is like good health: when you have it, you don't notice it. But as the years go by, oh, the memories, the memories of happiness past!’
Written between 1925-1926 about his time as a doctor in 1917, Bulgakov published these stories in various literary journals but had intended to eventually compile them into one volume. Unfortunately this never occurred within his own lifetime and many of his writings were censored or outright banned under Stalin. This edition, translated by [a:Hugh Aplin|26615|Hugh Aplin|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], also includes a much longer story, Morphine, a deeply personal and autobiographical story detailing Bulgakov’s own addiction to morphine that was separately published as a novel in 1926, as well as a 30 page biography about the author.
‘Forty-eight days ago I graduated with high distinction, but distinction is one thing and hernia is another.’
Much like Bulgakov being sent to Smolensk province after medical school, A Young Doctor’s Notebook opens with Dr. Bomgard arriving in a small provincial hospital seperated from the nearest train station by several miles of what can barely even be considered a road. It is bleak, remote, and far from anything Bomgard knows having grown up well off in Moscow.
‘We are cut off from people. The first kerosene lamps are seven miles away from us at the railway station, and even their flickering light has probably been blown out by the snowstorm. The fast train to Moscow will go howling by at midnight and won’t even stop — it has no need of a forgotten station, buried in a blizzard. Unless the tracks are snowed under.’
Bomgard arrives with a head full of academic knowledge, but no experience and quickly realizes his young features, lack of beard and ‘adolescent gait’ also undermine respect for him amongst the staff and locals. He also is stepping into the shadows of the hospitals previous doctor, the very much revered and heavily bearded Leopold Leopoldovich. Leopoldovich has left behind a considerable library of medical works, which become the bookish Bomgard’s sanctuary and savior in the difficult year to come.
‘Oh dear, if only I could read a bit of Döderlein now!’ the young doctor often thinks as new situations arise, often running back to his room on the pretense of needing a cigarette in order to rapidly turn through textbooks like cramming for an exam. It makes for a charming and relatable read, with the doctor studying how to perform a surgery moments before doing it, or, when about to deliver a complicated pregnancy, being bombarded by warnings of death or other dangerous consequences should he not perform perfectly. ‘From fragmentary words, unfinished phrases, hints dropped in passing,’ he later admits, ‘I learnt those most essential things that are never in any books.’ As his experience grows, so does his confidence and he learns to believe in himself, in his abilities, and to not overthink the mistakes. Which are many, a particularly comical one involving the overzealous pulling of a soldier’s tooth and his days of anxiety that follow.
Bomgard’s struggles definitely hit home and made me also reflect on my early days of employment with a darkly humorous fondness. My first job directly out of university was to work in a sign making factory in a very conservative district outside Grand Rapids. Having just left years of studying, literature, philosophy and political activism were still my favorite topics of conversation which I quickly learned made me quite the weirdo, asshole or potential communist demon depending on who you asked within the factory. There is a line in Steinbeck’s [b:In Dubious Battle|56083|In Dubious Battle|John Steinbeck|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1394742698l/56083._SY75_.jpg|1808026] warning the man sent to organize a union that he should never use a word the men don’t understand or he will lose them and their trust. This was a good lesson to learn and adapt, yet, as Bulgakov shows here, sometimes simply knowing something makes you untrustworthy or unliked. Much of the humor in these stories is the superstitions and other excuses locals give for distrusting medicine or the doctor himself. As [a:Michael Glenny|73039|Michael Glenny|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] wrote about Bulgakov, ‘This was the sense of being a lone soldier of reason and enlightenment pitted against the vast, dark, ocean-like mass of peasant ignorance and superstition.’ It can get a bit elitist, mind you, but currently living through a global pandemic where I’m watching my local health dept be protested by armed militia for asking people to wear a mask while a separate protest against vaccines was going on at the hospital...lets just say I was having a sigh and a roll of the eyes along with Bulgakov. The story about trying to stop the spread of syphilis includes a moment when people say they cannot be quarantined because it will impact local businesses. I high-fived Bulgakov and yelled "yea man, I remember that!"
‘In a year I have seen 15,613 patients, I had 200 hospitalized patients, and only six died.’
By the end of the book we see Bomgard having transformed into a confident doctor, which is truly inspiring. Word gets out and he begins having over a hundred patients a day (more than even the late great Leopoldovich). He still makes mistakes but he learns more and more from each moment and each day. In the end, the biggest lesson is to trust in yourself and to always be learning. While this is not the heft and power of [b:The Master and Margarita|117833|The Master and Margarita|Mikhail Bulgakov|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327867963l/117833._SY75_.jpg|876183] (honestly what could be though), this is still a fantastic little book and one of my favorites I’ve read this year.
4.5/5
‘And now a whole year has passed. While it lasted it seemed endlessly varied, multifarious, complex and terrible, although I now realise that it has flown by like a hurricane. I stare into the mirror and see the traces that it has left on my face. There is more severity and anxiety in my eyes, the mouth is more confident and manly, while the vertical wrinkle between my eyebrows will remain for a lifetime – as long, in fact, as my memories. I can see them as I look in the mirror, chasing each other in headlong succession.’
oblomov420's review against another edition
bu üçüncü bulgakovum ve kendisini seviom galiba. bayağı akıcıydı,, e şimdi ne olacak diyerek merakla okudum. bi de okurken sırtım üşüdü ve içim darlandı bu nedenle diyebilirim ki tam bi kış okuması dır
bi de okurken bundan bi dizi çıkarmış diyodum çoktaan çıkarmışlar başrollere de john hamm ve daniel radcliffei koymuşlar
bi de okurken bundan bi dizi çıkarmış diyodum çoktaan çıkarmışlar başrollere de john hamm ve daniel radcliffei koymuşlar
leonor_m's review against another edition
3.0
Happiness is like good health: when you have it, you don’t notice it.
rymrgard's review against another edition
5.0
_________
Wow.
I‘m stunned and in awe.
I‘ve put off reading this book, even though I‘ve owned it for a while, because I had a feeling I would love it and I didn‘t want to start so that it would have to end.
And just so we understand each other here: 5 stars are reserved for my long-term, all time favourite books, so 4.5 stars is the highest praise I can give it without appointing it a favourite.
I should note that I am working in the medical field, including in emergency care and as a first responder in the past. I‘ve seen more than I ever cared to see.
In short: This collection of short stories spoke to me on a whole different level — and, god, isn‘t it frightening and comforting at the same time that I, from 21st century central Europe, have shared many of the fears and experiences with an early 20th century Russian country doctor? Don‘t we all have our own version of the strangulated hernia?
I find it hard to decide which of the stories I liked best — in fact, I didn‘t read them as separate stories, aside from maybe the last one, and instead as one continuing narrative —, but Morphine is definitely the most harrowing one.
I just know that this is a book I will frequently return to, even just to remind me that I am not alone.
Darkness, black as Egypt‘s night, descended and in it I was standing alone, armed with something that might have been a sword or might have been a stethoscope. I was moving forward and fighting… somewhere at the back of beyond. But I was not alone. With me was my warrior band: Demyan Lukich, Anna Nikolaevna, Pelagea Ivanovna, all dressed in white overalls, all pressing forward.
bursar's review against another edition
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
kkletska's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
sfox_the_reader's review against another edition
dark
funny
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Content Warnings
Minor: Violence and War
cerviallacarica's review against another edition
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
beril's review against another edition
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
3kojou's review against another edition
i really enjoyed this!!! it was rather humorous and while i wouldn't say i exactly learned anything... i certainly feel like i know more about the human body and what can happen to it than i ever did before. i've lived a very privileged and easy life and so have never experienced anything even close to anything that was written in this book... it was a look into an entirely different world.
i appreciated the good humour that balanced out the doctor's adjustment and stress getting used to something he had little experience with, all at once thrown into the deep end. furthermore it was really interesting seeing what the medical field was like & in general what rural russia was like at the time, although the classism and whatnot was rather hmm... but seems par for the course at least based on the admittedly rather few russian novels i've read.
in any case despite the rather heavy subject material, i found this to be really good and engaging
i appreciated the good humour that balanced out the doctor's adjustment and stress getting used to something he had little experience with, all at once thrown into the deep end. furthermore it was really interesting seeing what the medical field was like & in general what rural russia was like at the time, although the classism and whatnot was rather hmm... but seems par for the course at least based on the admittedly rather few russian novels i've read.
in any case despite the rather heavy subject material, i found this to be really good and engaging