An examination of just what exactly our troubled healthcare system asks us to pay, as well as a look at what goes on behind the scenes at our hospitals and in the minds of caregivers.
What The Reviewers Say
Michael Schaub,
Star Tribune
Emily Maloney understands the country's medical crisis intimately. She's worked as an emergency room technician, but also has extensive experience as a patient.
Sarah Manguso,
The New York Times Book Review
Embedding herself into various corners of the bureaucratic medical machine, Maloney describes everyone she encounters with the same perspicacity.
Chris Vognar,
USA Today
Somehow, she never seems to lapse into bleak cynicism. Even when Maloney is caustic, even when she observes and describes with a gonzo spirit, she remains sympathetic to the people caught up in the system.
Kristen Martin,
NPR
'Cost of Living' — an indictment of the exorbitant costs of staying alive in America, and the weight of being hounded by a debt that reduces your life to dollars and cents — opens Maloney's debut essay collection of the same name. It's a powerful opening shot, but in the essays that follow, which recount Maloney's experiences as patient, caregiver, observer, and pharmaceutical industry worker, she stumbles before regaining the clarity of purpose and rigor of probing that 'Cost of Living' promises ...The six [essays] that follow the titular piece feel as though they are narrated from underwater ...Among the murkiest essays is 'Clipped'.