SOURCE: "Surgical Spirit," in New Statesman, Vol. 89, No. 2309, June 20, 1975, p. 807.

Pritehett, a modern British writer, is respected for his mastery of the short story and for what critics describe as his judicious, reliable, and insightful literary criticism. Below, he provides a positive assessment of the collection Notes of a Young Doctor.

Early experience as practising doctors has more than once given a headstart to a number of novelists and it is easy to see why. They are not bemused by literary tradition; their discipline makes them objective. Their material is waiting for them every day in the surgery; they see society without its clothes, naked and defenceless, frightened or malingering,. shameless or struck by fate. What happens when they become story tellers? Most of them become anecdotal in a conventional way; few attain the stature of a Chekhov. The practice of medicine was with him a key to...