The Immersion Library

‘But I’m going to try and stop thinking of money and material success. That isn’t the test of a good doctor. When a doctor earns five thousand a year he’s not healthy. And why – why should a man try to make money out of suffering humanity?’

I really enjoyed this book. The story of a fresh doctor, responsible and reasonable though naïvely idealistic, entering a Welsh mining town like Jonathan Harker into Transylvania to begin constructing his successful and principled career.

The novel follows his professional journey. Cronin exercises no subtlety in illustrating his indictments against the early 20th-century English medical industry. And yet I find myself intertwined with Dr. Andrew Manson himself; as a man, elated at meeting his match in Christine, flawed in his ego, a victim of frustration, a fragile speciman. Cronin requires little academic or estute insights to glean a sense of humanity in his writing. Like a Disney movie, I can’t help but enjoy the surface commentary and obvious judgements.

This does not mean that the novel lacks literary merit. In Dr. Manson’s early appointment as a medical assistant, shackled by unfair industry practices, one wonders if Dr. Page, his employer, does not somehow represent industry victimization himself and perhaps a foreshadowing of Andrew’s fate. I can’t help but wonder if Dr. Page sees in Andrew a hope for a future that he will not experience. And like an Austen novel, Cronin does not bury his social commentary under ponderous dwellings. I do not find any of the events and circumstances unrealistic or unbelievable so why shroud them in literary pomp?

One might find a true joy in a gender analysis of this book. Christine fascinates me. Though she exemplifies what her contemporaries might call the perfect woman, she does not lose herself for the sake of Andrew. She respects what her contemporaries would call her duties but, most importantly, she never loses sight of Andrew’s true nature the way Andrew might. She performs admirably as his north star; his anchor, his beacon home. What a strength. And yet, does Cronin treat her justly? Does she experience a deserved autonomy from him or simply exist as a boon for the main character?

Cronin could have drawn Dr. Manson from the blueprints of a Dostoevsky novel. He could have designed a Tolstoian society of mock happiness and the heavy burden of escaping it. He could have plotted Manson through a Kafkaesque dream state endlessly searching for the meaning in his beaurocratic struggle. Instead, he presents a fallible, reactionary hero who makes mistakes and learns about himself oftentimes the hard way. A feeble man bolstered by his principles and companion. A contrast against a sick and pompous medical industry. But he does learn. He does fall and get back up. He bares himself without pretense. He begs our empathy and sympathy. Like a character from a Western. A feel-good movie. I love it.