If it were not for dear friends, I would probably get caught up on the books stacked all over our house. It seems that is not about to happen. Several of these well-meaning people gave a copy of AN IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR by Patrick Taylor to me and here we go again.
If you need a warm, witty, literate read, AN IRISH COUNTRY DOCTOR is the best medicine I can recommend. This book could stand alone, but when I found out that there are sequels, I bought two more.
The plot is easy. Barry Laverty is fresh out of medical school and has taken a job in Ballybucklebo in Northern Ireland as an assistant to Dr. Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly. Even finding Ballybuckebo on the map is difficult and the one person that he finds to ask directions, runs away when Dr. O’ Reilly’s name is mentioned.
When he finally finds the right address, he is just in time to see Dr’ O’Reilly kick a patient out the front door into the hedges. This starts Barry’s education as a rural doctor with a man who sometimes has his own way of dealing with his colorful clientele.
The fun of this novel is getting to know these town inhabitants along with Barry. In the last chapter, we are invited to a bash in the O’Reilly’s back yard. By this time we feel that we have bought our own home in Ballybuckebo and moved in among some of the most delightful characters in literature.
Dr. O’Reilly’s housekeeper, Mrs. Kincaid has provided the Afterword to the book. This includes a short collection of basic Ulster recipes. I am sorry to say that she did not put in her recipe for blood pudding. The Doctor says that the smell would gag a maggot. She does, however, give us her recipe for Irish Soda Bread and Chicken Liver Pate.
Following Mrs. Kincaid’s Afterword is a glossary of Ulster dialect. Those of us who live in Central Pennsylvania will be surprised by how many expressions are already in our vocabulary.
Patrick Taylor is a medical doctor who now divides his time between Canada and Ireland. He wrote humor articles for a medical magazine and those articles gave birth to Dr. O’Reilly. If this book is any indication of how he must have practiced medicine, being one his patients must have been a treat.
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