With the opening three chapters of
Neurosurgeon... and Mum! proving an arduous struggle hopes for the remaining
eleven were cautiously pessimistic. When an operation on her best friend's
husband is a calamitous mistake brain doctor Amy Rivers heads to Norfolk on
sabbatical, only to end up sharing her aunt and uncle's house with visiting GP
Tom Ashby and his eight year old daughter. Tom lost his wife to death
only a year earlier and he has seen Perdy disappear further into a shell made
of self-doubt and whimsy. Perhaps, somehow, love can blossom in these difficult
times and Amy can find the family she always wanted. Meanwhile, we should
expect that she and Tom will practise a little medicine, for this is a
Medical™ and the readers demand excitement and descriptions of bladder
infections in amongst their usual concoction of tiresome emotional reiteration,
euphemistic sex scenes and parades of family togetherness with child and dog
followed by a hefty chunk of emotional reiteration.
Tom knows he should not enter into a relationship
with Amy, not because she isn't beautiful, on the contrary she is stunning, and
not because she is fat, on the contrary if anything she is underweight, but
because she is mentally troubled, she will soon return to London and foremost,
he must put the needs of Perdy first. Amy knows she should not enter into a
relationship with Tom, not because he isn't handsome, on the contrary he is
very handsome, and not because he doesn't make a lot of money, on the contrary
he does all right, but because he is a mourning widow and father who must put
the needs of his daughter first, not to mention that she, Amy, is a complete
mess of a woman who will soon be returning to London. Of course, no amount of
determination can stop Amy and Tom from being together, because they are
soul-colleagues, and sure enough, within a couple of chapters they have kissed
in the kitchen and made love in the bathroom area. Wanting neither a short-term
fling nor a permanent relationship with genuine commitment, they instead agree
to a short-term relationship hidden from locals and Perdy, but involving sex,
spiritual connection and a commitment ambiguous enough to placate the needs of
a lonely, unemployed woman desperate for a family and a grief-stricken single
father desperate for love.
While Perdy has taken to Norfolk as any
well-adjusted, healthy person takes to Norfolk her father and surrogate mother
sense turmoil and shyness within her. What about school work and school
friends? Should this girl really be spending all of her time with Amy and Buster the Dog, rather than kids her own age, doing normal things kids do, such as
running around screaming? Why won't she speak about her deceased mother and why
does she take such an interest in cooking, cleaning and other womanly things?
Isn't all this time she could be playing outside or sleeping outside seriously
cutting into the time Amy and Tom could be using for sex? To help, the
potential couple take his daughter out on day-trips, to pick strawberries to turn into
ice cream, and to see the seals, to possibly bake into a pie. However, every
adventure is strewn with complications, as members of the public occasionally
appear to ask awkward questions, assuming Amy to be Perdy's mother or Amy to be
Tom's wife, and, in an extreme case, one noisy youngster collapses after an
allergic reaction to a wasp sting.
Throughout the latter stages of
Neurosurgeon... and Mum!, author Kate Hardy takes the opportunity to explore
Amy's second career as a neurosurgeon. Sequences such as the wasp incident are
followed by numerous other, less action-packed scenes, where Amy shows off her
knowledge of the nervous system, and Hardy eats up the word count by copy and
pasting from her medical dictionary. First there is poor Mrs. Cooper, who has a
great deal of pain in her jaw, possibly from yawning incessantly whilst reading
Mills & Boon novels. Doctor Ashby is merely a general practitioner and his
comprehensive understanding of health does not stretch to the intricacies of
neurology. But hey, says Tom, the woman I'm sleeping with might be able to help
and, over a strategic glass of decent wine, he invites Amy to speak
perceptively on gamma knives and other mystical instruments, thus calming Mrs.
Cooper's worst fears, revitalising Amy's passion for patients and science, and
allowing Hardy to bulk out a flagging second act.
Soon Amy is lecturing locals on the wonders
of pain and the cutting edge advancements in the fight against ageing
appropriately. Her vigour returns, as does her radiate smile and she even eats
enough of Perdy's pudding to return to a salubrious weight. Things are going so
swimmingly, in fact, that Hardy allows the reader to indulge in a second sex
scene. With chapters dwindling, however, there is still the small matter of the
plot to sort out. Thankfully, Amy's former best friend calls out of the blue to
apologise and admit that Amy's handling of the operation that destroyed her
life and career was actually a roaring success. Ben can move his hands and
masculine areas, and although he will never walk again he can have a life and
Laura can have children the natural way. Amy, did you hear, the concept of the
novel was based upon a fallacy and the reasons to doubt and cast yourself into
isolation never existed. Laura and Ben are fine, everyone can become friends
again, and why, Kate Hardy, why can't Ben ever walk again? This is a book of
fiction, and Ben isn't real, but still you take away the feeling in his legs
just like you take away any remaining feelings of joy in the reader.
As for Mrs. Cooper, Max Barton and the rest
of Tom's patients none see their subplots through to completion, as instead
Amy gets her dream job forty minutes down the road, Tom finds a permanent place
in Joe's practise, peripheral figures of little importance stop being
unreasonable for reasons that are not explained, Perdy betrays her age with a
series of statements that belie even her claims at being a realistic human and
Tom and Amy are married at the local church, watched on by all, who have
returned from wherever they were for a painfully elongated final chapter. What
about old Doctor Joe's casebooks that Amy was transcribing for the majority of
the story? Well remembered, but that plot-point is entirely abandoned by the author, as her
heroine already has everything she ever wanted, except the love of her clearly
quite discerning parents. There we leave the small world of Amy Rivers and Tom
Ashby, little Perdy and their new puppy, Buster Two, safe in the knowledge
their family will be strong, loving and constantly baking. We assume the
assortment of secondary characters will sort themselves out and even if they
don't they were never significant anyhow.
Neurosurgeon...
and Mum! certainly delivers on both love and medicine. First, at its gooey
centre, is a Cherish Romance, where a put-upon loner and a single parent find
strength through the other's encouragement and warm eyes. There is no sense of
conflict between the pair, no obstacle to overcome, only the need for time to
heal wounds and allow affection to grow. With two characters unsure of their
futures Hardy proved herself unable to conjure the most minor of difficulties, and quickly
resolved to watching her couple fall in love, always knowing there were
diseases and injuries to distract the reader from noticing the complete lack of
narrative twists. Anyone with the merest experience of living will be able to
relate to a good Medical™ as it brings together two favourite
conversational topics, gossip and health. Naturally, from a technical standpoint the book is unreadable drivel because of its anaemic plotting,
weak characterisation, interminable dialogue and a sloppy prose style.
Nevertheless, the demands of the subgenre could be found responsible for this.
Hardy places emphasis on Amy's rehabilitation where she regains her
self-confidence from Tom's support. This works in regards to Mrs. Cooper, who
has two thankless scenes of listening to surgical jargon, but Hardy quickly
hedges her bets by introducing numerous other ailments and old people. This
creates a series of disparate elements, as while Tom treats patients his
career has little to do with his emotional growth as a lover and a father.
Perdy's development was thoughtlessly arrested to the point where the book
would have been better off without her, but this flaw was consistent with all of
Neurosurgeon... and Mum! to the point where it did not need to be told.
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