The House of God
By Samuel Shem and John Updike
4/5
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About this ebook
“The raunchy, troubling, and hilarious novel that turned into a cult phenomenon. Singularly compelling…brutally honest.”—The New York Times
Struggling with grueling hours and sudden life-and-death responsibilities, Basch and his colleagues, under the leadership of their rule-breaking senior resident known only as the Fat Man, must learn not only how to be fine doctors but, eventually, good human beings.
A phenomenon ever since it was published, The House of God was the first unvarnished, unglorified, and uncensored portrait of what training to become a doctor is truly like, in all its terror, exhaustion and black comedy. With more than two million copies sold worldwide, it has been hailed as one of the most important medical novels ever written.
With an introduction by John Updike
Samuel Shem
Samuel Shem (a.k.a. Stephen Bergman), MD, is the author of several books of fiction including the bestseller The House of God. Heis a doctor, novelist, playwright, and activist. A Rhodes Scholar, he was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School for three decades and founded the Bill W. and Dr. Bob Project in the Division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School. He divides his time between Boston and Tierra Tranquila, Costa Rica.
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Reviews for The House of God
283 ratings19 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was entertaining......curious as to how out of date it is, regarding the experience of interns. I didn't necessarily love the style of the writing. It reminded me of a weak attempt to write in the style of Catcher in the Rye (a book which I ultimately dislike but which does have a distinct voice). I agree with one review that I read who commented that this book made her think "so what?" What he seems to present as being "shocking" about the treatment of the ill and the dehumanization of the elderly doesn't have nearly as much punch to it as I believe the author expects. Perhaps because the medical field is no longer on the same pedestal that it was when the book was written? Regardless, I enjoyed this but wouldn't read it again. And I would be reluctant to recommend it to someone unless I really knew what they liked in a book.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Loved the humor, over the top and with a lot of personality. (Often crude.) Shem clearly had fun writing this. The story lacks momentum, so it was easy to put down. But overall, the unique setting and attitude made the novel worth reading. >‘In New York once,’ said Fats, ‘we had a contest to see how long the medical service could go without an admission. Thirty-seven hours. You shoulda seen what we sent outta there. Roy, help them. Be a WALL.’
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I know this book is considered bible-ish in the medical community but I found it so sexist it was hard to read and mostly absurd. It took me a year to get through because I just didn’t want to read it.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5This book has special resonance with medical residents, and people close to them. It wasn't written for me, someone not in the medical field. Given that, I was still struck by how juvenile it was, slapping back and forth between trying to shock the reader with sexual/medical descriptions and a pretty basic exploration of the psychological components of resident training during the 1970's (an abusive environment, echos of which still exist today). I was hoping to get an honest assessment of the book's place in history and it's shortcomings/successes in the afterward written by the author in 2010, but instead just got some self-congratulatory statements about how important the book is and how we should all read his new book. Bummer.Taken as a work of fiction - the main character is unlikable and largely survives the book without any character growth, just changes in circumstance. The character's biggest flaws, his treatment of underlings and women alike as disposable paper-thin characterizations, are not explored in any depth. Everyone more important than the main character is wrong, incompetent, or both; everyone at the character's level is flawed in more obvious and unfixable ways; and everyone below the characters level doesn't exist as anything more than a pair of tits or a set of hands pushing a wheelchair. Possible exception to this - Fat Man.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Was worth reading when you didn't have Scrubs, ER, Gray's Anatomy... kind of depressing, much like real residency.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Not funny, crude, disrespectful of patients, horribly exaggerated
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Detailed description of medicine and medical training presented with black humor is fascinating. Gives a sense of the cynicism inherent in the health care system. The soft-core porn is just a little too over the top -- every boy's fantasy.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is an example of the benefits of stepping out of one's comfort zone. If one of my coworkers (who was a nurse in the 70s) had not lent me this book, I never ever would have picked it up. It is exactly as it proclaims to be on the cover - the "Catch 22" of medicine. It is a hilarious satire of life in a modern hospital, where the extremely elderly can be artificially kept alive forever, but athletic 30-year-old fathers still die of heart attacks. As you can imagine, it is very dark. The characters are phenomenal (if a little dated), from the genius black sidekick and the horny nurse to the policemen who speak like Harvard professors and the bitter workaholic female resident.It wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed it and it's helped me understand my coworkers a little better. Highly recommended, at least if you don't usually read this sort of thing.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Catch 22 book for med students. Written in the '70s, he says his mission was to change the inhumanity and cynicism he experienced as a med student, and decided the only way was to write a satiric novel. My daughter (now a doctor) loved it because it was (still) so true to life - for me it was profoundly depressing for this very reason.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I came across The House of God while I was an internal medicine resident in September, 1978 when it was first published. I can still remember leafing through it in the bookstore and laughing out loud. I could not believe that someone had actually put into writing the things my fellow residents and interns secretly joked about to relieve our stress. It has since become the bible for all medical professionals. I can't recommend it enough to all readers, not just doctors, nurses, and physician's assistants. It is the funniest book I have ever read.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5One of the two funniest books I have ever read. (The other is Catch-22.) Do not read it before or during a hospital visit.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dr. Sanja Gupta had the author of this book on his show and highly recommended the book as a classic, especially for medical interns. Of course, things haven't changed - they have only gotten worse in terms of not letting people die without overwhelming medical intervention.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I read this book when I was a medical student in the early 1980s (mandatory read for any medical student or resident). A very acerbic view of life as an intern in a large hospital but unfortunately it rings true. I got to meet the author in person last night as he gave a lecture at the UCF medical school.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is one of my favorit books. It is set in a hospital and deals with a lot of medical problems. But in contains wisdom which is useful in millions of other areas, especially the Zebra Rule: "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras"
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reading this book during my 3rd year of medical school was cathartic; however, I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone outside the medical profession. It's crass, irreverent, explicit, and cynical - but it validated a lot of what I had been feeling and experiencing in the hospital environment, and there is a good dose of humanity that comes through. To anyone who is in medicine - a great read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On first picking up the book & reading the Introduction I thought I'd have a lot of trouble reading this, and that I wasn't going to enjoy it at all. However, I found it very easy to read once I got started, although initially I thought it quite disgusting, a bit too ribald and bitter. After a while I found I was beginning to feel compassion for the interns despite their cynical treatment of the gomers. Ultimately, the 'terns bitterness is unsurprising and I can see that suicide might be quite prevalent for those unable to cope.Definitely well worth reading. I'd like to read it again some day as it's worth a second viewing, I think. I'd probably get a laugh out of it the 2nd time even though I'm not a part of that medical fraternity.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Reading House of God used to be a rite of passage for medical students and residents in days gone by. I wonder, is it still serving that function? Black humor about hospitals and doctors. Oh yes, and the patients, too. Despite the outrageousness of the book, there are kernels of truth behind many episodes. There is some wisdom within as well, such as, "The longer you stay, the longer you stay." Some great words of advice that go beyond responding to an arrest - "Always walk into the room." Yes, it is not a flattering view of medicine, but for those who have experienced medical training, it reflects the dark humor that is often necessary to deal with it all. If you are in medicine, I recommend reading it despite its less than flattering view of our profession.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A great book. So original. Might be made into a great movie. It probably already has been. This book helped me get started collecting books by doctors.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5And finally another reread, Samuel Shem’s House of God. As a brand new medical student, I was assigned, fresh-faced and wide-eyed, to an adult intensive care unit as a ‘taster’ to counter-balance the dry lectures and tutorials that characterise the first couple of years of medical training.With no specialist knowledge at all, we were daunted by the onslaught of highly technical and intense terminology and concepts in the ICU, and the consultant knew it. He told us that he didn’t care if we didn’t turn up, he didn’t care if we learnt anything in particular from him during the four weeks we were scheduled to attend the unit intermittently. What he did ask each of us to do though was to read this book, and to take it all in. It is still one of the most useful pieces of teaching I have ever been given.Shem’s House of God is the tale of a group of medical interns in the 70s, working in an affluent Jewish-founded hospital – the House of the title – in the US. His description of the realities of what it was like to be a junior doctor was considered shocking at the time – in the new introduction to the book, John Updike says it does for medicine what Catch-22 did for war, and that’s not far from the truth. Shem’s story is at least in part semi-autobiographical (the House of God is probably the Harvard-affiliated Beth Israel hospital in Boston), and that gives it the ring of truth, as the main character. Roy Basch, traces a parabola from eager young doctor all the way down to the depths of despair, beaten down by the system, and his ascent back out of the other side. Like all of these sorts of books – Jed Mercurio’s Cardiac Arrest TV series and his novel Bodies are the UK equivalent – the depths are deeper than most of us experience, but the flavour of it all rings absolutely true.It is no exaggeration to say that amongst the many people in my life that have coloured the sort of doctor that I have become, the character of the Fat Man in this book is one of them. He charts a path between the necessary desensitisation to the often horrific realities of medical practice whilst still being tempered with genuine compassion and ability to see the human effects of what is done that served – and still does – as a role model. The consultant who insisted we read this book knew exactly what he was doing, and it is advice I have gladly repeated to medical students since I became responsible for helping to train them. For the non-medic it offers an insight into a particular time and place – around Basch, America is reeling from the Watergate scandal - but also a timeless description of the other side of medical care. Shem’s language has coloured all of those who came after – ‘bounce and turf’ are now standard medical terms, as are GOMERs and LOLs in NAD, and the Fat Man’s ‘Laws of the House of God’ are familiar to many who’ve never read the book.Anyway, despite the fact that it's undoubtedly had some influence on me, it's been a long time since I've actually reread it. Doing so was prompted by the fact that I lent my copy to some bugger ages ago, who has not returned it, and I now can't remember who it was; and I saw it in a 3 for 2 offer in a bookshop. So I bought myself a new copy, which led me to reread it. It still stands up. Its vision is too dark - most of us find our own way through with far less trauma, but it nonetheless still resonates on every level.