Record Added: 4/19/2014  A Favorite Book Series Irish Country Books #1 Setting  Ireland Topic Adult Fiction, Classics Publisher Forge Books ISBN 0765316234 Year 2007 Age Adult Pages 352 Description Printed dustjacket
|
|
A straitlaced novice doctor gets initiated into the unorthodox world of Ballybucklebo, a cozy Ulster village nestled in the bygone years of the early sixties. Barry Laverty is fresh out of school and uncertain about what type of medicine he should practice when he answers an ad for a physician's assistant in Ballybucklebo, a small Northern Ireland town populated, it seems, entirely by eccentrics.
Laverty is initially taken aback by his new boss, Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, whom he meets as O'Reilly is literally throwing a patient out of his office. Laverty spends most of the novel swaying between understanding O'Reilly's methods and second-guessing the boxer turned doctor who dishes out plenty of placebos and isn't above telling a white lie or a crude joke to worried patients.
Though Laverty often comes across as painfully uptight, he also has an endearing-for-its-awkwardness streak that only surfaces around Patricia Spence, though she'd rather focus on her civil engineering studies than make time for a boyfriend. Serving as a foil to all the innocent fun is the lecherous, greedy Councillor Bishop, who, thanks to a scheming O'Reilly and a reluctant Laverty, gets his comeuppance. |
| Notes
First in the series of "Irish Country Books":
1. An Irish Country Doctor
2. An Irish Country Village
3. An Irish Country Christmas
4. An Irish Country Girl
5. An Irish Country Courtship
6. A Dublin Student Doctor
7. An Irish Country Wedding
8. Fingal O'Reilly, Irish Doctor
|
|
