I didn't know such a thing existed.

Hey, whaddya know? There is at least one decent novel on the New York Times Notable list, and it's Shannon Burke's Black Flies.

I started this book one afternoon and wasn't really happy until I had the time to finish it up the next morning. It's the story of Ollie, a young man whose MCAT scores weren't enough to get him into medical school, so he becomes a medic (EMS) in Harlem. He begins, as many medics do, with the idea of helping to save people's lives. A mere eleven months later, after receiving very few thank yous from the individuals he and his colleagues pick up on a daily basis, dealing with Rutkovsky, a partner he respects but who is so far beyond burnt out that the phrase has lost all meaning, and struggling to feel something, anything, besides contempt for human beings, he finds he doesn't know that he cares about saving lives all that much anymore. Or, as his former girlfriend tells him:

"'Well, that's what I'm talking about, Ollie. You want to help people. That's your good quality. That's what I always liked about you. That's why you wanted to be a doctor in the first place. You were always like Mr. in college. But...I can hear it in your voice. Your good qualities aren't being used. They're getting beaten down.'" (p. 139.)

It's a great novel. Short, scary, but very thoughtful. And hey, it's a New York Times Notable book, so you can walk around holding it and feeling very cultured.

Comments

[Jessica]

I loved this book!

Did you notice that at least some of the Harry Potter books were New York Times Notable Books? It seems almost to indicate "this book sold well" as much as anything else.

[Citizen Reader]

Hey, Jessica!
I'm so glad you liked it. It wasn't an upper read but man, was it interesting. Have you read any of his other books?

Yeah, I don't know what is up with that NYTimes book list. I can forgive them for Harry Potter but I sure don't know where a lot of their other choices come from. Evidently this is why I don't write for the New York Times. :)

[Jessica]

I haven't read any other of Shannon Burke's books, but I would if I ran across one.

The thing I wonder most about the NYTimes list is, why have I never heard of most of them? I mean, I spend a significant amount of time throughout the year reading reviews, wandering through bookstores, going to readings, etc, and it seems like these selections just come out of nowhere.

[Citizen Reader]

Jessica,
I think you raise an excellent question. The only thing one ever knows for sure about the NY Times list is that if any books were published by Updike or Philip Roth in that year, they'll be on it. Otherwise, it's a total crap shoot. (And I do mean, by and large, a "crap" shoot.) I think the list is a weird mix of high-culture (or, as I think of them, "totally New Yorky") books with novelists you've never heard of. Perhaps they just come out of nowhere to me because I don't read the New York Times?

I was so pleased to find this book on the list, though. It didn't seem like one they'd choose, which made me like it all the more.