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Maybe someday
25
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
32/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Emma Goldberg
Publisher:
Harper
Date:
June 8, 2021
In March 2020, soon-to-graduate medical students in New York City were nervously awaiting âmatch dayâ when they would learn where they would begin their residencies. Only a week later, these young physicians learned that they would be sent to the front lines of the desperate battle to save lives as the coronavirus plunged the city into crisis
What The Reviewers Say
... remarkably, with her sensitive reporting and deeply human portrayals of Sam, Gabriela, Iris, Elana, Ben and Jay, Goldberg has created a work that not just documents a significant moment in time but helps us heal from it, too. For anyone seeking to understand, or remember, what New York and its hospitals were like in the spring of 2020, Life on the Line is essential reading.
This is the kind of story that gives life to books about medical training. Unfortunately, there are too few of them here. The back story of the various characters takes too long. Drawn-out digressions on medical racism or the history of the internship system further disrupt the narrative flow. By the time we get to the wards, the book is nearly a third over. Goldberg would have done better, I think, to start the book when the internships begin and fill in the back story later. How Gabriella’s mother started her hair salon isn’t as interesting to us as the sounds, smells and action on the front lines.
Memorable, emotional, and even everyday anecdotes fill the pages.
... vivid and heart-wrenching.
