DOCTOR LISE’S BOOKCASE
Doctor Lise’s Bookcase is the story of a present-day cancer specialist in Paris whose life would be worse and whose treatments less successful without the company of books. This generous, inventive text with its quick humour is not quite a factual account and not quite an essay or even a novel, but it portrays Doctor Lise in her day-to-day hospital setting, facing the sick and their families as well as the serious and sometimes awkward questions that every stage of this disease raises.
With the help of great writers such as Philip Roth, Thomas Bernhard, Norman Mailer, Céline Tolstoy, Henry James, Cormac MacCarthy, Malcolm Lowry, Franz Kafka and Robert Antelme (to name but a few) the doctor gets as close as she can to the human soul and body, and gets right inside incarnations of pain, fear, shame, frustration and deterioration but also desire, sex and the scandal that is death. At the same time, Doctor Lise gauges the similarities between the art of healing and the art of writing: the absence of judgement which means that each patient deserves to be “considered as a person, perhaps even a character, and not just as a patient.”
But as well as helping Doctor Lise with treatments for her patience, writing also satisfies this fifty year-old woman’s need for poetry and beauty as she goes about cigarette in her mouth, a dissident of sorts and someone who could so easily be pummelled by the machine of hospital administration. With little inclination to join current debate about her profession and its sometimes unacceptable working conditions, doctor Lise brandishes various writers’ words and energies, giving life and meaning to her every decision, and a face to her every patient.
Mona Thomas was born in Finistère and lives in Paris. She is a writer and art critic, and has already had eight novels published, including Alar (Fayard, 1995) and Ton visage animal (Champ Vallon, 2008), as well as three essays on contemporary art.
C’est avec l’aide de grands écrivains comme Philip Roth, Thomas Bernhard, Norman Mailer, Céline, Tolstoï, Henry James, Cormac Mac Carthy, Malcolm Lowry, Franz Kafka ou Robert Antelme (pour n’en citer que quelques-uns) que le médecin approche au plus juste l’âme et le corps humain et saisit de l’intérieur les incarnations de la douleur, la peur, la honte, la frustration, la déchéance mais aussi le désir, le sexe et le scandale de la mort. De même, le docteur Lise mesure le point commun entre l’art de soigner et l’art d’écrire : l’absence de jugement, qui fait que chaque patient se doit d’être « considéré comme une personne, voire un personnage, et pas uniquement un malade ».
Mais outre le fait que la littérature aide le docteur Lise à mieux soigner, elle étanche aussi le besoin de poésie et de beauté de cette femme de cinquante ans, cigarette aux lèvres, dissidente à sa façon, que la machine hospitalière pourrait broyer. Peu disposée à se soumettre aux discours dominants que subit la profession et aux conditions de travail parfois irrecevables, le docteur Lise, en brandissant la voix et le souffle des écrivains, donne vie et sens à chacun de ses gestes, et un visage à chacun de ses patients.