The General Hospital opens with a fatal car crash and a difficult discussion that sets to tone for the latest instalment of Anne Buist and Graeme Simison’s Menzies Mental Health series. A mother, the driver, has a spinal cord injury. Her husband was killed instantly. The fate of her two children, a five-year-old and an infant son, remain in question. Our main character, trainee psychiatrist Dr Hannah Wright, is wiser, braver and has more confidence in her skills as she returns in book three and helps one of the doctors, Kate, as she breaks the news of the little girl’s death to the mother. This is a series that never shies away from the difficult moments but ensures they are always balanced with funny moments and warmth.
Perinatal psychiatrist Anne Buist, and her partner Graeme Simsion, who wrote the best-selling The Rosie Project series, have built a world that sparkles with a realism and moral complexity.
Hannah and her supporting cast of colleagues are cast into confronting medical situations and forced to feel their way through with nothing but their training and intuition. As in the previous books, the cases are written in an episodic style. Most chapters open with a new presentation: a burns patient who may be a victim of dowry abuse, an Olympic hopeful whose shattered dreams raise the question of whether he is a suicide risk. This style keeps the pace moving and puts the reader in the shoes of a hospital staff member: the patients just keep coming. Each is unique and has their own set of needs and complications.
Anne and Graeme excel in constructing nuanced cases. Often, Hannah and her colleagues become detectives, plying their skills to get to the truth of a patient’s story.
Did young and beautiful aspiring actor really set herself on fire accidentally, or are her overbearing mother-in-law and charismatic pilot husband hiding something? What really happened in the moments before the mother-of-two life coach crashed her car in an accident that claimed some of her family members’ lives?
Fans of the series will enjoy the return of some old favourites from the earlier books.
Max, the larger-than-life bipolar barrister who needs lithium to stay balanced, is admitted with kidney failure. His story contains one of the fraught questions these books have become known for: does he come off the lithium, and preserve his kidney in order to live a miserable and ineffective life? Or does he stay on the lithium, and undergo dialysis to preserve his intellect?
Reading The General Hospital is a similar experience to watching the hit medical drama The Pitt. It’s fast paced, and full of characters who care deeply about their vocation. The effect is the comforting escapism encapsulated by a term competency porn; the pleasure of watching good humans execute their roles with diligence and dedication.
Tying the hospital episodes together is the narrative thread of Hannah’s life. Raised by parents who habitually take in foster kids, her family life has always been complicated. She also has her personal life to contend with. Hannah has just moved in with her boyfriend Alex, who seems more interested in studying than making time for Hannah.
The collaboration between Graeme and Anne makes for a vividly real portrait of life in a hospital. The General Hospital is taut, fast-paced and wonderfully engaging.
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