Where do you begin to stop a country from bleeding? Can you make a difference by healing or failing to heal it one person at a time? Check out Rx by Garin Cycholl.
Location: USA
Rx Synopsis
First, do no harm…
A patient comes to you with vague but troubling symptoms. He seems to know a little too much about the odd sickness you’ve seen in other patients lately. You start to wonder what he’s been up to in his chicken coop. Is he growing the next plague? Should you call the FBI? The only problem is that you’re not really a doctor.
Taking on his dead father’s identity, a man becomes intent on practicing medicine in an out of the way town. He watches the nation bubble into a new kind of civil war around him. A con man amidst rumors, homemade bombs, and a developing sense that he has been “made,” Rx wrestles with a distinct American identity—slippery and always in flight. Between a violent “here” and an anxious “there,” a wider, remapped “America” emerges.
Book review
”Where does a healing begin in this land?”
Where do you begin to stop a country from bleeding? Can you make a difference by healing or failing to heal it one person at a time?
If you play at being a doctor…
The narrator grew up in a broken household, his dad seducing the nurses at the hospital and his mom out of sight. After his father’s death, he sets out to figure out who he is – both in comparison to his father and without his father – while reading up on medicine in outdated books. He reinvents himself as his old man and impersonates being a doctor in a small town full of eccentric but normal and not very likable people, including himself.
Despite the fact that he is not trained for it – nor does he pursue training or study effectively – he does his best to do no harm and offers a listening ear to his patients. He somewhat passively absorbs what is happening in the world around him and is not very passionate about anything. He is lost without a fixed place of residence, occupation, and identity. “What do you live for, Doctor Rex? Maybe it’s just that we die for something.”
Fix the world one person at a time
The world around him is a real mess, with people being found dead, bombings and political struggles. Stories about these events are interspersed with stories about his medical practice. The way his days are described also illustrates his disturbed life and world. The chapters are short, with his personal encounters structured like the events happening around him. One wonders if his impersonation will help him make something of himself.
What I found so impressive about this book is how the conditions of the narrator’s patients begin to reflect the state of the country, a state very reminiscent of what is happening in the real world right now. When he sees his patients, it’s like he’s watching the news.
Skaggs on eggs
Everything the narrator goes through slowly leads him to one of my favorite scenes: the egg-influenced Skaggs on his horse. The scenes the narrator shares with Blackwater and Major Skaggs are always very entertaining. Regardless of the likability of their personalities, they make you think beyond the most visible aspects of the story in Rx, such as how the way many people live their lives is different from being a hostage. The depth of the story increases toward the end. There is no climax or exciting plot, but you feel the control slipping away from the characters. The last page of the book marks a good time to return to the life you hope you can influence. Even if it’s just one person at a time.
Interested?
Buy your copy of Rx from Amazon (available 1 February 2022).
Book details
Title: Rx
Author: Garin Cycholl
Language: English
Publisher: Atmosphere Press
Pages: 364
ISBN (13): 9781639881444
Publication date: 1 February 2022
About the author
Garin Cycholl grew up in south-eastern Illinois and has lived in Miami, southern Minnesota, and Chicago, where he has lived for the past two decades. His series of Illinois poems (including Blue Mound to 161, Hostile Witness, The Bonegatherer, and the forthcoming Prairied) explore violence, displacement, and changing ecologies across the state throughout the twentieth century. His recent work also includes the screenplays, The Indianan and The Hippodrome, an adaption of Cyrus Colter’s novel. Rx is Cycholl’s first novel.
Many thanks to Atmosphere Press and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
