From Goodreads: It is 1903. Dr. Ravell is a young Harvard-educated obstetrician with a growing reputation for helping couples conceive. He has treated women from all walks of Boston society, but when Ravell meets Erika - an opera singer whose beauty is surpassed only by her spellbinding voice - he knows their doctor-patient relationship will be like none he has ever had. After struggling for years to become pregnant, Erika believes there is no hope. Her mind is made up: she will leave her prominent Bostonian husband to pursue her career in Italy, a plan both unconventional and risky. But becoming Ravell's patient will change her life in ways she never could have imagined. Lush and stunningly realized, The Doctor and the Diva moves from snowy Boston to the jungles of Trinidad to the gilded balconies of Florence. This magnificent debut is a tale of passionate love affairs, dangerous decisions, and a woman's irreconcilable desires as she is forced to choose between the child she has always longed for and the opera career she cannot live without. Inspired by the author's family history, the novel is sensual, sexy, and heart-stopping in its bittersweet beauty.
My review: As a free goodreads win, one just never knows how well written the story will be so this novel was much a surprise to me. I found myself disgusted with some of the decisions the character's made, I found myself yearning for unrealized dreams right along side the characters and I felt the sheer desperation to find something, anything to fill a void left in each of their hearts.
I took Erika to be a mouse when I first met her. She seemed timid and withdrawn in her quest to have a child which caused me to wonder why she was even pursuing pregnancy at all. She didn't seem to really want a child, let alone, go through the procedures to become pregnant. As the story progresses I learned more about Erika, her dreams and her emotions. Her emotions seemed as if they could have been those of a woman struggling with infertility in 2010, just without much of the knowledge we have today. Once Erika's dreams are shared with the reader and we hear her thoughts, we begin to understand her heart ache and melancholy.
Peter was such an odd man; I feel as if I never figured him out. He was possessive yet caring. I think he would have made an awesome poker player...he always kept something secret to pull out at the right moment.
Dr Ravell struck me as a lonely man, surrounded by such extremes. Overt happiness when a couple conceives a child with his help and those who keep trying despite failure after failure. I did appreciate is less than "moral" behaviors throughout the book as it gave him a more realistic avenue for his emotions and loneliness. There is a strong resistance mentioned in the story about men submitting to sperm count testing, which I found interesting. Sperm testing was the first step towards changing the outlook of conceiving that gender and fertility were a woman's "problem" to the reality that sperm carries the "gender card" and fertility is as much of a man's problem as it is a woman's.
On a more personal note, my husband is a Paramedic and went through Medic school our first few years of marriage. While reading this novel I realized, once again, how deeply indebted we are to the medical community of the past. So much that we take for granted now, from information to testing to better methods of IVF, weren't always available. After my husband delivered twin babies in a woman's home, it sort of hits home...the medical discoveries and advancements hit home. In the time in this novel, women didn't have babies at hospitals with pain medications and sterile environments.
If this book sounds like something you might be interested in...stay tuned for a contest later this week!! :)
Grade: B
Finished: June 27, 2010. 2010 Count: 50.
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