Doctors and Nurses — Lucy Ellmann

A hilarious new novel set in a rural doctor's office by the queen of "pitch-black comedy."

Nursing is a noble calling. So what the hell attracted Jen, a gigantic nurse with a habit of killing her patients? Now she's had the temerity, and misfortune, to fall in love with her boss, a dishy dashing doc known throughout the land for his long limbs, grey eyes, cleft chin, arresting bedside manner and other stereotypical attributes. Jen is ready to trample the ever-growing pile of prostrate patients in order to surrender herself utterly to him, but whenever she gets the chance, he's winched up into the air by helicopter, to attend yet another medical emergency! It's a prescription for disaster.

In her devastating send-up of life and love in a country doctor's office, Lucy Ellmann conducts a public autopsy on the failings of modern medicine, armed only with pathos, passion, pethidine, and a pasta machine.