The Doc is In...

Doc, by Mary Doria Russell, got my vote for this month’s book choice.  But, once I began to read it, I thought I might have made a mistake.  After about 20 pages, I checked to make sure it was fiction, because it was reading like a not-very-engaging biography.  I was afraid I wouldn’t finish it in time.  It’s never a good sign when I check to see how many pages I have left in a book!

But, I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. First of all, some little things made it readable.  I thought the chapter names were clever, although I don’t know what most of them mean in card-playing lingo, so if they were supposed to convey something, that didn’t work for me.  But, I always like it when authors name their chapters.  I also liked that she listed the characters at the beginning, and especially that she identified the few characters who weren’t real.  I love historical fiction, but I do like to know which characters and events are made up.

Mostly, I liked the rather unusual way she portrayed all these infamous characters.  Wyatt’s bad teeth had a profound effect on his personality, and I loved that Doc took care of that problem for him.  It’s such a mundane and ordinary dilemma for the larger-than-life characters.  In fact, I liked Doc the best when he was being a dentist.  He seemed committed to his profession as a way of helping people, not making money.  In fact, as Kate often pointed out, his dental work didn’t come close to making a living for them.  It made me feel sad for him that his health forced him to live in a place where he wasn’t likely to be able to practice the profession he loved.  Toward the end, his health was so frail that he couldn’t have practiced the profession in any case.

And Kate…quite an unlikeable character for me.  She had some issues for sure.  She was a different and unpleasant person when she was drunk, which was a lot of the time.  I had no problem with her being a prostitute; women in those days truly didn’t have many options.  But, she was nasty to Doc and just about everyone else.  On the other hand, she was there for Doc in his darkest hours, so I have to give her credit for that.

One thing that disappointed me was that Russell never showed the reader the shoot-out at the OK Corral.  I guess I was supposed to remember what happened there, but I don’t.  Since she referred to it throughout the novel, I assumed we’d experience it, and I wish she had put it in.  Now I feel like I have to do a little research and find out what happened.

Finally, I have to talk about the author’s digressions, two of which stood out to me.  At one point, she said that had James not talked Kate into going back to Doc, then everything would have turned out differently.  Doc would have married Belle, they would have been happy with many children, and even Belle’s parents would have fallen back in love because they were grandparents.  Wow!   That seems a bit extreme.

But, I loved the section where she described Fr. Alexander’s experience with the Indians, when he was taking the place of the beloved Fr. Paul.  Fr. Alex realizes that he’s sort of like Titus was to St. Paul—always second best because the man he was replacing was so loved and respected.  Once he found his peace with that, he was a better missionary to the Indians.  Random, but I liked it.

What did you like about the book?  Did any characters or events surprise you?  What do you think of Mary Russell as a story-teller?