The author of a challenging new novel about the aftermath of medical litigation swapped writing prescriptions for prose, and found the voice and story of a doctor cut adrift.
Like many professionals successful in their line of work, Monash graduate and GP Dr Jacinta Halloran one day stumbled upon a moment of career evaluation.
That moment occurred ten years ago. Her children were young and she was contemplating her return to full-time medical work. But she also felt the niggling pull of a long-buried dream.
"At school I loved writing and I was good at it. And I always thought I would be a writer. Before I became a doctor, I suppose. So I decided that I had to bite the bullet, and couldn't just think about it but had to do something," says Dr Halloran (MBBS 1982).
That decision last month resulted in the launch of Dissection, the story of Dr Anna McBride, a GP whose life crumbles following a crushing judicial finding of medical negligence. Helen Garner describes the novel, which is written in a first-person voice, as "an unputdownable and richly rewarding read, an extended ethical work-out of the classiest kind".
Readers have already told Dr Halloran about their strong sympathy for the main character, responding to a powerful idea born idea six years ago when the author read a newspaper article about a doctor facing a case of delayed diagnosis.
"Originally, I thought 'that poor woman', that it was so unfair for her. But on top of that emotional response there was the intellectual response, that I could have been in that situation. And I know about that world because I am a GP. I wouldn't have written about a doctor necessarily just because I am a doctor, but it was more that I felt there was a story there when I read that article, that there was an emotional core that I could write about," she says.
By that time, Dr Halloran was already enrolled in a professional writing course at RMIT and developing her portfolio as a medical writer. She had put off the novel writing subject for several years, feeling nervous that "the novel seemed the hardest thing to do".
"I'd had a few failed attempts at writing [Dissection] and when I actually hit on writing it inside the character's head, my novel teacher said 'this is what you've got to do. That's the story. That's the way you've got to write it'," she says.
Dr Halloran strongly believes that doctors should not let the medical life define them. Drawing further on her experience as a GP, she is about to embark on her next novel, which will peripherally touch upon themes of disability and disease.
Two days per week, Dr Halloran still sees her patients, taking her pen to prescriptions instead of prose.
"Sometimes I think I'd like to extend those days. But then other times, I think, if I do that, my writing time will be curtailed. And I don't want to spend five or six years on the second novel. I'd like to do it much faster."
Dissection, RRP $27.95, is published by Scribe.
