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More Than it Hurts You

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Josh Goldin was savoring a Friday afternoon break in the coffee room, anticipating the weekend at home where his wife, Dori, waited with their eight-month-old son, Zack. And then Josh’s secretary rushed in, using words like intensive care, lost consciousness, blood.
That morning, Dori had walked into the emergency room with her son in severe distress. Enter Dr. Darlene Stokes, an African American physician and single mother whose life is dedicated both to her own son and navigating the tricky maze of modern-day medicine. But something about Dori stirred the doctor’s suspicions. Darlene had heard of the sensational diagnosis of Munchausen by proxy, where a mother intentionally harms her baby, but she had never come upon a case of it before. It’s rarely diagnosed and extraordinarily controversial. Could it possibly have happened?
When these lives intersect with dramatic consequences, Darlene, Dori, and Josh are pushed to their breaking points as they confront the nightmare that has become their new reality. Darin Strauss’s extraordinary novel is set in a world turned upside down—where doctors try to save babies from their parents, police use the law to tear a family apart, and the people you know the best end up surprising you the most.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from July 28, 2008
      Strauss's third novel is the story of three ordinary individuals whose paths interconnect in extraordinary ways. Arthur Morey's exquisite performance brings those characters and many others to life in a believable and honest manner. His slight shifts in dialect are subtle yet flawless; his pacing is steady and allows the story to unfold nicely. There is an underlying sense of urgency and panic in each of Strauss's characters, and Morey allows it to sharpen his reading without going overwhelming it. Ultimately, listeners will be enthralled by the touching stories Strauss offers here, but Morey goes one step further and manages to bring the stories to vivid life. A Dutton hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 7).

    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 7, 2008
      The third novel from the author of Chang and Eng
      and The Real McCoy
      is an often satiric page-turner that tracks a Long Island family crisis. Josh Goldin is a happily married TV airtime salesman with an eight-month-old son. When baby Zack is treated twice for mysterious and life-threatening symptoms, the head of a pediatric ICU, Dr. Darlene Stokes, tells Child Protective Services that she thinks Josh’s wife, Dori, suffers from Munchausen syndrome, whereby the afflicted injure their children deliberately to draw attention to themselves. The Goldins’ ensuing battle to keep Zack provides grist for public debate about issues ranging from parents’ rights to race (Dr. Stokes is black, the Goldins Jewish). Strauss takes delight in skewering a world in which everything (news coverage, legal representation, hospital beds) is for sale, sometimes digressively, always amusingly. The stereotypes are intentionally heavy-handed: Josh’s perceptions almost always register through race and class-related fear and disgust. But the heart of the story—the unraveling of Josh’s life and the steady erosion of his faith that ignorance can be a virtue and happiness a choice—is riveting.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Meet the Goldin couple, who are indeed golden. Josh, a fair-haired ad exec, and his beautiful wife, Dori, have a perfect 8-month-old son and even a fabulous sex life. But Arthur Morey's narration hints at something beneath their self-congratulation. When their son becomes unconscious while at the hospital, the couple faces the scrutiny of Dr. Darlene Stokes. Stokes accuses the couple of Munchausen by Proxy and then finds she must cope with hospital politics as well as shadows from her past. Ultimately, the fact that Dori has bled her child into unconsciousness is overlooked by a hospital more concerned with its reputation than with child abuse. The irony is not lost on Morey, whose narration illuminates the extent to which mundane appearances can mask dark motives. S.W. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

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