The Apprenticeship of Doctor Laverty

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Paul Grescoe’s remark that Patrick Taylor’s novel about village
medical practitioners is “James Herriot for humans” is half right.
The Apprenticeship of Doctor Laverty is also Peter Mayle’s Provence
stories moved to rural Northern Ireland. Here are memorable characters
with the wonderful dialect and vocabulary of the fictional village of
Ballybucklebo, and respect for the 56-year-old doctor Fingal Flahertie
O’Reilly and his new assistant, Dr. Barry Laverty, who has just
graduated from medical school.

The narrative revolves around the younger man’s growing appreciation
of O’Reilly’s approach to country medicine. “[H]alf of curing
folks,” he says, “is getting them to have faith in their healer …
[S]ometimes us doctors aren’t much better than a bunch of Druids. We
might as well be casting the runes and chanting incantations to Lugh, or
Morrigan or any of the other old Celtic gods.” Characters like old
Maggie MacCorkle (whose headaches are centred a couple of inches above
her head), Seamus and Maureen Galvin (who are ready to move to America
with “wee Barry Fingal,” named after both doctors after the
delivery), and the mean-spirited councillor Bertie Bishop (“Ulster’s
answer to Adolf Hitler,” according to Kinky Kincaid, O’Reilly’s
memorable housekeeper) are all portrayed with a delightful blend of
humour and appreciation.

Born in 1941 in Blackpool, England, Taylor was raised in Bangor,
Northern Ireland. Before he turned to writing, he was a practising
physician, retiring in 2001 as head of obstetrics and gynecology at St.
Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver. His medical training informs the novel
on every page and lends it verisimilitude. This is an altogether
wonderful novel.