Singular Intimacies Reviews
These essays. . . resonate with insight, intelligence, humor and an extraordinary sensitivity to both the patients she treated in this inner-city facility and the staff she worked with. . . .Ofri brings to this memoir a combination of medical information and some very expressive writing. . . The pieces in this powerful collection are tied together by the struggle of a clearly gifted physician to master the complexities of healing.
New England Journal of Medicine
Ofri is a gifted writer. Her vignettes ring with truth, and for any physician or patient who knows the dramas of a big-city hospital they will evoke tears, laughter, and memories. Indeed, any reader, physician or not, will find in Singular Intimacies the essence of becoming and being a doctor.
— Robert S. Schwartz Read the full review.
“The world of patient and doctor exists in a special sacred space. Danielle Ofri brings us into that place where science and the soul meet. Her vivid and moving prose enriches the mind and turns the heart. We are privileged to journey with her from her days as a student to her emergence as a physician working among those most in need.”
—Jerome Groopman, M.D, author of How Doctors Think
“Danielle Ofri is a finely gifted writer, a born storyteller as well as a born physician, and through these fifteen brilliantly written episodes covering the years from studenthood to the end of her medical residency, we get not only a deep sense of the high drama of life and death which must face anyone working in a great hospital, but a feeling for the making of a physician’s mind and soul, and for her bravery and vulnerabilities as she goes through the long years of apprenticeship.”
— Oliver Sacks, M.D., author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
“A searing, tough and tender story of a young woman learning not only to be a humane doctor but truly human-all the more remarkable for her teacher being the grande dame of city hospitals, Bellevue, and her patients being the whole New York City world. Written with courage, humility, art, and heart.”
— Samuel Shem, M.D., author of The House of God and Mount Misery
“This is a beautiful book about souls and bodies, sadness and healing at a remarkable hospital. Danielle Ofri has so much to say about the remarkable intimacies between doctor and patient, about the bonds and the barriers, and above all about how doctors come to understand their powers and their limitations. This is a book written in lyrical language about a hospital which cares for the poor and the homeless, a book which celebrates the complexity of life and death.”
— Perri Klass, M.D, author of Love and Moden Medicine and A Not Entirely Benign Procedure
“What is it like to become a doctor? Danielle Ofri answers with candor and humility and pride. This book should be required reading by anyone contemplating a life in medicine.”
—Richard Selzer, M.D. author of Letters to a Young Doctor
“This is a wonderful book, a true classic medical memoir. Ofri deftly assembles tales to paint an indelible portrait of a great American hospital. I highly recommend it for physicians, would-be doctors, and anyone interested in medicine in all its behind-the-scenes glory.”
—Sandeep Jauhar, M.D. author of Intern: A Doctor’s Initiation
Danielle Ofri stands observing at the crossroads of the remarkable lives that intersect at Bellevue. She is dogged, perceptive, unafraid and willing to probe her own motives as well as those of others. This is what it takes for a good physician to arrive at the truth, and these same qualities make her an essayist of the first order.
— Abraham Verghese, author of The Tennis Partner and My Own Country
With passion, reverence, and rage, Ofri exposes the daily indignities and triumphs of city hospital care. Seeking both confirmation and absolution, she depicts the honor, the failures, the savagery, and the deep, deep sorrow of medicine. Life is saturated with death, she reminds us, as is death with life. General readers will learn some medicine from this book, while doctor-readers will weep to relive their own initiation into the care of the sick.
— Rita Charon, M.D., Ph.D., Director, Program in Narrative Medicine, Columbia University; Editor-in-Chief Literature and Medicine
Boston Globe
…[Ofri's] writing tumbles forth with color and emotion. She demonstrates an ear for dialogue, humility about the limits of her medical training, and an extraordinary capacity to be touched by human suffering…Ofri’s book is an important addition to the literary canon of medicine.
— Jan Gardner
Kirkus Reviews
Heartwarming memoirs of a young woman’s years at a venerable New York City hospital, where she is transformed from bewilder medical student to assured physician. Let’s hope there’s a whole library of books to come from this talented physician/writer.
Boston Globe
…Danielle Ofri’s Singular Intimacies: Becoming a Doctor at Bellevue about the emotional life of doctors and their patients, captivated me so much…In the gripping chapter ”M & M” (morbidity and mortality), she chronicles the medical decisions that ended a patient’s life. ”I cried for my belief that intellect conquers all,” she says… It’s this marriage of intellect and emotion that makes Singular Intimacies read like a deftly crafted and luminously written novel.
— Caroline Leavitt
Library Journal
As Ofri relates in this marvelous book, becoming a doctor is a complex process… Her gifted storytelling discloses a variety of patients, their medical needs, and the doctor-hospital-patient interface… It is this alchemy that Ofri’s well-crafted prose sucessfully exposes… Highly recommended…
The Berkshire Eagle
…Ofri is courageous enough to describe the imperfect world of an urban hospital, to detail her failures and missteps as well as triumphs — and the successes are framed in terms of the patients’ recovery…This book is satisfying as a portrait of a brave, intelligent and engaging woman, as a coming-of-age story and as a window into the world of medicine. I recommend it highly.
— Lesley Beck
Booklist (*Starred Review*)
[Ofri] tells the profoundly affecting story of her many rites of passage on the journey from student to doctor. . . .And she relates each transforming experience in prose so powerful in its lucidity and quest for truth that it arouses both tears and wonder.
The Journal News
…Each of the 15 chapters in Singular Intimacies is a gripping account of the tenuous link between life and death. Together, they tell a story that’s not as much about a physician’s training as about a healer’s birth.
— Barbara Nachman
Washington Post
…Ofri discovered that she could draw a line between being a doctor and being a woman, that she could hate one patient and care deeply about another, that she could battle the medical establishment and even herself, and that despite modern medicine and her belief in the power of intellect, death conquers all…Her longtime best friend, Josh, died of a heart attack, which led her to the book’s central realization: that her relationship with her patients is a sacred zone, populated by “living, breathing, feeling people” — like Josh, and like herself. Know thyself: That’s the theme of [this] book.
— Diane Scharper
The Pharos (Alpha Omega Alpha Magazine)
Life–once again–imitates art. Danielle Ofri offers us 16 biopsies of her medical education and life experiences at Bellevue Hospital…Singular intimacies are well-named, far removed from our traditional concepts of doctor-patient interaction…I wish I had this book when I was becoming a doctor at Bellevue almost 60 years ago. Here in our hospital in northern New Mexico, all..of our family practice residents have received copies. We plan several seminars in which attending physicians an dresidents will discuss some of Ofri’s cases, and how the issues raised may be encountered in our own teaching program.
— Irwin Hoffman
Hope Magazine
It takes courage, drive, and a large heart for a young doctor to find beauty in the teeming masses that daily stream through Bellevue’s door…Finding meaning and hope where both are often elusive is the strongest reason to read Ofri’s book.
— Chloe Breyer
The Women’s Review of Books
[Ofri's] Candide-like adventures as she advances from third-year medical student to resident are harrowing, poetic…she always learns something about herself, medicine, and humanity… Every patient deserves a doctor of Ofri’s sensibility, one who recognizes the profound vulnerability of relying on strangers.
— Sharon Lieberman
Journal of General Internal Medicine
Ofri… has written compassionately about a number of compelling experiences during her training. Despite her lack of role models, she is smart enough to figure out how to be a caring and effective physician. Physicians, students, residents, and laypeople willnot only enjoy a series of absorbing stories but will also learn much about the art of doctoring from this book.
— Anna Reisman
The Writer: The Journal of the Medical Writers Association (England)
[Ofri] is a master of the writer’s craft as well as a sensitive and caring physician.
— John Rawlinson