The New York Times has described Perri Klass's short stories as "subtly astonishing and very funny. Klass writes stories that sound true. She's a medical school graduate, a passionate traveler, a mother, a writer. Her preoccupations come forth in her stories. She has plenty to say about love in a science-drunk world, how the brain works, and the heart. And how the sparks fly when the two collide." Sparks fly again in her new collection, LOVE AND MODERN MEDICINE, a literary tapesty of the beauties and terrors of contemporary domesticity.
Instantly recognizable, the appealing characters in these stories are the able sort who can cope with any crisis at work but are often undone by the complexities of life at home. They are parents, doctors, patients, friends, and lovers, who encounter one another in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, in a world in which professional expertise -- even the finest medical expertise -- cannot always ward off threats to everyday happiness.
In "Freedom Fighter," a pregnant obstetrician steals a getaway weekend with an old friend among the outlet malls of northern New England. A fruit-fly geneticist in "The Trouble with Sophie" struggles to contend with her daughter's jargon-spouting kindergarten teacher. In "Intimacy," a high school biology teacher, exhausted by new motherhood, listens bleary-eyed to the details of her coworker's "intimacy counseling" with her latest boyfriend. And in "Necessary Risks," an anesthesiologist balks at spending two weeks alone with her energetic and precocious four-year-old. Including three O. Henry Award -- winning stories, LOVE AND MODERN MEDICINE is full of small wonders and large satisfactions.

Author: Perri Klass
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Published: 05/01/2001
Pages: 192
Weight: 0.44lbs
Size: 8.24h x 5.58w x 0.48d
ISBN: 9780618109609


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 04/01/2001 pg. 442
Library Journal 03/15/2001 pg. 108
Booklist 05/01/2001 pg. 1666

About the Author
Klass, Perri: - DR. PERRI KLASS is the award-winning author of eleven works of fiction and nonfiction, including Love and Modern Medicine and Other Women's Children. She is a pediatrician and teaches journalism and pediatrics at New York University. Klass is also the medical director of the national literacy program Reach Out and Read, dedicated to promoting literacy as part of pediatric primary care. She lives in New York.