Damon Galgut is an author whom I first encountered in his novel The Promise (see my review here). I enjoyed that book and so when I saw The Good Doctor in a charity shop in Scotland last summer I decided to buy it for the sum of £2. It turned out to be money well spent.
The book is set in rural South Africa, in an area which used to be one of the Homelands established by the South African government under apartheid. Our narrator, Frank, works as a doctor in a hospital set up to serve the local Black community, but it has sparse equipment and fewer drugs. The staff have little work and they transfer complicated cases to another hospital, so they mostly exist in a rut, waiting for something to change. Into the hospital comes Laurence. He is the good doctor and the opposite of Frank. He wants development and change now, and has an idealistic view of what it means to deliver services in this way.
The story is about how Laurence’s interventions and his attitude shake up the hospital and its staff. He doesn’t understand the situation politically or socially and he causes real harm in the way he acts. Frank finds himself in the position of having to deal with the results of Laurence’s actions and he also begins to develop a social conscience of his own, which causes him to challenge some of the things that are wrong in his life. In the end the status quo wins, little changes, and the situation leads to tragedy.
At the heart of this story is the acknowledgement that we make accommodations with things we know are wrong or unhelpful in order to live a quiet, and unchallenging, life. Frank, and his colleagues, have done this. Laurence is young and eager and unsettling. He brings hope and change but eventually these come to nothing because everyone else acts in their own self-interest.
This is a powerful piece of writing and the author is good at creating tension for the reader. There are no heroes here and the label of “good” is not really applicable to any of the characters, but we still engage with them and understand why they act as they do.
I shall pass this book on to Oxfam for a new reader but I would buy another book by this author if I saw one.
Anne Is Reading 