Frank HuylerCritiques

“I have been one acquainted with the night.”
—Robert Frost

Spare, nuanced, and often dark, Huyler’s first volume of literary stories based on his experience as a medical trainee and young ER doctor focuses on patients, hospital staff, and his own responses to both. Some of these pieces aren’t for the faint of heart, and I’m talking not only about some very gruesome medical details How about a young man on on a ventilator in whose mouth maggots breed and writhe? Or the procedures involved in growing back the skin of a burn patient? but also about psychological disturbances, including those in Huyler’s colleagues. For example, a crisp, steely neurosurgery attending is addicted to an array of drugs (she even shoots up before performing procedures); she’s intrigued by the occult (particularly voodoo) and is a cruel domestic abuser. Luckily, someone informs on her. This is a stunning collection characterized by sharp, brilliant, always economical prose. Some of the stories are fragmented and cryptic to the degree that I wasn’t clear what Huyler was trying to achieve. They weren’t my favourites. Most are brief and propulsive. During pandemic times, many want to cast doctors and nurses as one-dimensional heroes. Huyler’s collection is a corrective to that. I’m not sure everyone wants to have their illusions so corrected.½

White Hot Light is a collection of short, compelling personal essays/narratives, mostly about Frank Huyler’s life in emergency medicine. A few of the pieces focus on memories of childhood and youth, and a couple of others highlight medical culture—the separate worlds of doctors and nurses, the resistance of specialists to having difficult or complex cases handed over to them from the ER, and the petty prejudices that patients wish doctors could somehow rise above. The stories are not strictly medical. They focus less on anatomy, pathology, and procedures than on moral and ethical dilemmas. Huyler is honest about his own fears, failings, and fatigue and how these have impacted his medical decision making and the care he’s provided over the years. Some stories present patients as raw, animal selves; others convey a sense of what it’s like to deal with humans at their most vulnerable, as they attempt to preserve what dignity they have left. Throughout, Huyler is determined to maintain his humanity, acknowledging how much easier the work would be if he walled himself off from the suffering of others. The writing is exceptional and nuanced—literary without being ostentatious. For all these reasons, I think the book would appeal to those who normally steer clear of nonfiction. I recommend it highly.

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3.5* It was good. I don't think I'll read it again but it was a nice and fast read. Learned a lot about ER doctors/nurses. Very insightful.

This was a good book written by an emergency room doctor. Short stories and anecdotes that I really enjoyed. It tells all, about the liaisons among staff members, the stress of doctors and the stories both good and bad about patients. Good, quick read.

I read this as a recommendation from someone, and honestly, I was quite surprised that I enjoyed it so much. The protagonist's moral dilemna and questioning of good and bad as a physician certainty appealed to my "medical side", and the writing was very engaging and I was easy pulled me into the story. I don't normally sympathize with characters but I found myself being very hopeful that the protagonist would "figure it out" and have a happy ending.

This is a fascinating look at the stories of emergency medicine as experienced by a young resident in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Most stories are heartwarming, others quite gross. But, overall this is a four star rating book told with authenticity and depth of feeling.

This is a well-written, in-depth book.

Better than ER and Casualty.

Reading about how Dr. Huyler saved the murderer even though he knew he was a murderer is what drew me into this book. These stories make you sad, some are funny, and some are gross. The story with the maggots was the thing I will remember most, oh the horrors of medicine! Huyler writes like a painter, very lyrical and artistic. Read it in a few hours. This will appeal to those interested in medicine, gore, and drama. A good read!

True vignettes of interpersonal hospital dynamics which would resonate with anyone who works in any ER. Not a book of amazing medical stories, but probing reflections on cases which are common but nevertheless show the frailty of the human person and its psyche.

Frank Huyler is an emergency room physician as well as a wonderful writer. These insightful essays were written while he was working in an Albuquerque, New Mexico hospital. Each one of these short stories is well-crafted and illuminating. I was in the habit of reading one or two of them every morning at Starbucks, before I started my day.

After his wife dies,a middle-aged doctor searches for meaning in his life in the mountains in a country like Pakistan. The novel is engaging (especially on a long flight to Australia) and well-written, but ultimately a bit disappointing and bleak. This is a first novel for Frank Hulyer, and I would definitely give him another chance to impress me.½

At first, when learning that Frank Huyler is a doctor who decided to weave through the literary world, I thought he'd be doing what John Grisham. But, besides remembering that there are a number of very famous writers who were once doctors, I suspended the preconceived notion and gave the book a read. I really enjoyed it - while not up to the standards of the literary greats, Huyler does craft a novel that gives some depth to the characters and some color to landscape and setting that isn't blatantly named.½

Right of Thirst opens with cardiologist Dr. Charles Anderson saying good bye to his wife - as he assists with ending her life.

With her passing, Charles is lost, functioning but not really living. He attends a lecture by Scott Coles, who has started a relief organization to help earthquake victims in a third world country. On a whim, Charles offers to be the doctor of the refugee camp Coles is setting up.

"I suppose another world was what I wanted most."

Charles ends up in an unnamed third world country, high in the mountains, with Scott Cole's girlfriend as the other staff member as well as a resident cook and his nephew. In charge of the camp is military officer Captain Sanjit Rai.

But the refugees don't come. When they attempt to make contact with the local village, Rai discourages them. Anderson's skills are needed to help with a local child, but that is the extent of the use of his medical skills. They are visited by further military personnel, as there may be enemy action in the area, but still the camp remains empty of refugees.

Frank Huyler has created a powerful character driven novel. The interplay between the three main characters, each from a different world and their views on class, aid and life are compelling.

The title 'Right of Thirst' had me mystified in the beginning. It is explained part way through the novel and I think it is the catalyst for the entire plot.

"Our religion came from the desert. From Arabia. Water was very precious to them. And so one of our oldest laws is that we must give water to travelers. that is why we always give tea to our guests."

"Offering tea is an obligation?"

"Yes. In our scripture this is called the right of thirst."

Right of Thirst explores the obligation that Western countries and populace feel to provide aid to countries that they have deemed in need. What happens when that offering is not embraced? Charles has mixed feelings when he is at the camp. He is angry and annoyed at the local population for not being suitably impressed and thankful for what is being done for them.

"What is wrong with you people? Why do you do this? I'd like to know why I came all this way for nothing."

The reply make him even more unhappy.

"We did not ask you to come here. And now that you cannot be a hero, you are angry. You are trying to help yourself, not us."

Huyler's writing is beautiful. The detail and thought in every exchange and description is worth stopping, rereading and savouring. The juxtaposition between Western idealism and Third World reality is explored in this thought provoking and timely novel. Huyler himself is a physician and has lived in various countries. His work has a ring of authenticity. I found it especially interesting as I had just read and reviewed a memoir of a young doctor in a refugee camp.

Highly recommended. A portion of sales from this book are being donated to ProSorata by the author.

If one were to assign an author to come up with a novelized version of the Eliot poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” this book could well have been the result.

Dr. Charles Anderson, 58, is a cardiologist on the back nine of life, and feeling a bit like Eliot’s Prufrock. In fact, there is more than one allusion to “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” in this tale of a mission to Pakistan. (The author doesn’t actually name the country but says in his post-story interview that the novel is set in a place “much like Pakistan” but purposely left unnamed so that “the setting is partly an allegory, a place that might, on some level, be anywhere, at any time.”)

Anderson’s wife has just died, and he is looking for a way to forget, a way to find meaning, a way to reclaim some of the passion he felt as a young man. His youth seems to have vanished, a victim of ambition and of the American compulsion to define oneself through work. He is plagued by a vague sense of lost possibilities. He is distant from himself, as well as from others.

He happens to attend a lecture on earthquake relief and impulsively volunteers to serve at a new refugee camp being erected. With him at this far outpost in the middle of nowhere are Sanjit Rai, the liaison officer; Elise, a young German geneticist; Ali the cook; and Ali’s nephew and helper.

They don’t stay long; fighting erupts nearby and they must move on. Anderson only fleetingly considers going to some other remote location, but rejects it as foolish. He is not as young as he used to be.

Throughout their adventure, they learn how alien this other culture is to them, and yet, there is a common humanity to be found as well. At the very least, binding them together, is the ceremony of tea. Offering water to travelers is a tenet of Islam. Rai explains “our religion came from the desert, from Arabia. Water was very precious to them. And so one of our oldest laws is that we must give water to travelers. That is why we always give tea to our guests.” Anderson asks, “Offering tea is an obligation?” “Yes,” answers Rai, “In our scripture this is called the right of thirst.”

The character of Rai is insistent on this basic right of Islamic people, as well as their right to be who and what they are, in spite of what Americans and Europeans may think. The assumed superiority of his way-of-life and his values by Anderson can be seen as a counterpart to America’s ethnocentric insistence on the universal appeal of its culture, its political organization, and its obsession with individual achievement and self-promotion.

Ironically, Anderson has discovered that on a personal level, all he had invested in achievement added up to nothing. The diplomas, the awards, the articles, the meetings, all had a human cost, and left him with not much but money. He doesn't seem to gain much insight from this revelation, however. He is baffled by the geopolitical realities outside of the West, and cannot help judging the people he meets by his own very different standards. The money, at least, is useful, and Anderson decides he will not be too hard on himself: “I was no worse than most, and better than many.…”

For I have known them all already, known them all:—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot

At one point Elise tells Anderson that he can be depressing, boring, thinks too much, and takes everything too seriously. I thought that was a fair description of the character, and perhaps the novel as well. Had the author not wanted to be allegorical, he might have closed the distance better between the reader and the book. There are some thought-provoking aspects of this novel, but I’m not sure it is worth the journey.

Collection of short stories from Emergency Medicine/ITU.

Started out interestingly, about a doctor whose patients have a mysterious illness which he then gets. But what it was, and what happened in the end, was very unclear and the writing got worse.½

Better than ER and Casualty.