Memoirs of a Physician

What can I say? I adore Dumas. There is something absorbing about his novels. For me the attachment began when I read The Count of Monte Cristo. That book literally blew me away. I remember reading it late at night in my old house. I would read in bed with nothing but a small book-light and sporadic candles for light. It set the ambiance for the novel. I was literally absorbed through the pages and became a silent observer in the dark world of Edmond Dantes.

Memoirs of a Physician was yet another win for me. Dumas transports the reader into the separate- yet commingled lives of its numerous characters. Each chapter had me rooting for yet another character while displacing the one before. Yet, a few short pages later and I would sympathize with one I moments before had been blaspheming. This novel takes the normally defined line between protagonist and antagonist and makes it as murky and wide as the Seine. **{I can’t claim to know if the Seine is actually murky or wide having never been to France myself; but I am striving for some French analogy since the book deals with the French monarchy in the time shortly before the revolution. So please allow me this artistic exception and if chance ever brings me to withhold the Seine with my own eyes I shall amend the former statement as needed.}**

In any event, the characters moved back and forth like a tennis ball caught between two professional players on court. This fuzzy view of any definite hero or villain made the novel feel more lifelike. No one was a complete angel or devil. You could rationalize some of their actions ‘sometimes’ and other times wonder what the hell they were doing. The books demonstrated that no one is consistently an angel, and likewise, the devil himself can occasionally be pitied.

The book is the first in a short series, so if you do attempt this novel, be prepared to follow it through with the others. I am currently about halfway through the second novel, The Queen’s Necklace. I hate to admit it, but so far this is my least favorite Dumas story. I’m not finding the characters nearly as interesting as I did in the first novel. I have a couple hundred pages left and am clinging to the hope that things will pick up soon.