Waiting room. A memoir. Gabrielle Carey. Melbourne: Scribe, 2009 (217 pp). ISBN 9781921372629.

I’ve got mixed feelings about memoirs. Having cringed my way through the insipid or vitriolic ramblings of a number of previously admired politicians, actors and journalists, I’ve come to the conclusion that some people’s inner worlds are best kept that way. Nonetheless, I had high hopes as I read the blurb for well known Australian writer Gabrielle Carey’s Waiting room, and plucked it from the review pile to read over a long weekend.

All doctors should read patient stories and Carey is an accomplished Australian writer of my generation — surely there would be much in the book to learn from and relate to. I was not disappointed.

Waiting room details the diagnosis and management of Carey’s elderly mother’s meningioma. As a medical story, it appears accurate and straightforward and its portrayal of the clinical encounters, surgery and hospital stay is surprisingly undramatic. Without labouring the point, and with a very Australian sense of acceptance and ultimate trust in the medical system’s competence, Carey documents long hours spent waiting for life-changing medical appointments and the all-too-common experience of having planned surgery delayed by a lack of hospital beds. The medical characters are in the book for their functionality rather than their personalities.

In fact, the medical story is really a backdrop to the main business of the book; Carey’s relationship with her enigmatic mother.

When you reach a certain age, you realise that life is filled with unanswered questions, incomplete understandings, ambiguous meanings and relational loose ends. The beauty of a memoir is that it can unapologetically reflect this chaos without the need for momentous conversations, dramatic revelations and eventual resolution.

As a doctor, writer, daughter, wife and mother, I found much to learn from and relate to in Carey’s Waiting room. Sometimes the truth may be stranger than fiction, but generally it is just much more real.