Working Stiff
Ratings20
Average rating4.1
15
Ratings20
Average rating4.1
“Fun…and full of smart science. Fans of CSI—the real kind—will want to read it” (The Washington Post): A young forensic pathologist’s “rookie season” as a NYC medical examiner, and the hair-raising cases that shaped her as a physician and human being.
Just two months before the September 11 terrorist attacks, Dr. Judy Melinek began her training as a New York City forensic pathologist. While her husband and their toddler held down the home front, Judy threw herself into the fascinating world of death investigation—performing autopsies, investigating death scenes, counseling grieving relatives. Working Stiff chronicles Judy’s two years of training, taking readers behind the police tape of some of the most harrowing deaths in the Big Apple, including a firsthand account of the events of September 11, the subsequent anthrax bio-terrorism attack, and the disastrous crash of American Airlines Flight 587.
An unvarnished portrait of the daily life of medical examiners—complete with grisly anecdotes, chilling crime scenes, and a welcome dose of gallows humor—Working Stiff offers a glimpse into the daily life of one of America’s most arduous professions, and the unexpected challenges of shuttling between the domains of the living and the dead. The body never lies—and through the murders, accidents, and suicides that land on her table, Dr. Melinek lays bare the truth behind the glamorized depictions of autopsy work on television to reveal the secret story of the real morgue. “Haunting and illuminating...the stories from her average workdays…transfix the reader with their demonstration that medical science can diagnose and console long after the heartbeat stops” (The New York Times).
Reviews with the most likes.
Very interesting. But pretty gruesome in the descriptions so if you are sensitive to blood and trauma, this is not the book for you.
Learned some about anatomy, and that in real life, the work of the medical examiner takes a long time.
She had the misfortune of working in New York City through the 9/11 and a plane crash within the same month.
It's written as a sequence of anecdotes, there isn't a flow to the stories.
It's more like a collection of related short stories rather than a novel.
It's non-fiction of course, I made the comparison to give a sense of what reading it is like.
But with the subject matter, that works pretty well.
★ ★ ★ 1/2 (rounded up)
This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader as part of a quick takes post to catch up–emphasizing pithiness, not thoroughness.
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I really don't know what to say about this account of a forensic pathologist's training in NYC. Read it, listen to it, whatever. It's fascinating. It's a good reminder/way to learn that not all of forensic pathology is what you see on police procedurals (and even then...wow, fictionalized).
Her retelling of the reasons she left her surgical residency—and the fact that she's not the exception to the rule (beyond having the good sense to leave when so many don't), is one more reminder that we desperately need to overhaul medical training in this country.
But that's not what the book is about—it's about the day-to-day grind, the countless ways pathologists find evidence about what kills us, the hard job of getting answers for the bereaved, and yeah—there's the criminal justice side to it. I'm a little squeamish when it comes to real-life medical “stuff”, I'll watch a Tarantino marathon and not blink and the bucks of blood (well, maybe the dance scene in Reservoir Dogs some days), but I can't last 15 minutes in a medical documentary without my toes literally curling. There were moments listening to this that made me wonder—but there weren't many, and they passed quickly. If you're like me, stick with it.
I was all set to say this is a good book and well worth your time, and then we got to the penultimate chapter. Melinek wisely organized her story by topic, not chronology. Largely due to this chapter (I'd guess), because you want it at the end so it doesn't dwarf the rest. She started her residency a few weeks before September 11, 2001. I'm not even going to try to describe it. The whole book could've been written about this and the immediate aftermath.
As much as I enjoyed(?) the subject (don't judge me!), it just felt a bit repetitive after a while. For such a short book, it felt long.
The book covers a few years at the start of the doctor's career as a medical examiner but there's so much dialogue between her and colleagues I wonder if she wrote it all down at the time or if its just been made up to simulate what would have been discussed. It just felt a bit off.
Definitely worth a read, just perhaps written in a bit of an odd way for a nonfiction/memoir.
