The Ministry of Bodies

Life and Death in a Modern Hospital

By: Seamus O'Mahony

Narrated by: Aidan Kelly

Life and death in a modern hospital, from 'poet-physician' Seamus O'Mahony, the award-winning author of The Way We Die Now and Can Medicine Be Cured?

Seamus O'Mahony charts the realities of work in the 'ministry of bodies', that huge complex where people come to be cured and to die. From unexpected deaths to moral quandaries and bureaucratic disasters, O'Mahony documents life in the halls and wards that all of us will visit at some point in our lives with his characteristic wit and dry and unsentimental intelligence.

Absurd general emails, vain and self-promoting specialists, the relentless parade of self-destructive drinkers and drug users, the comical expectations of baffled patients: this is not a conventional medical memoir, but the collective biography of one of our great modern institutions - the general hospital - through the eyes of a brilliant writer, who happens to be a gifted doctor.

©2021 Seamus O'Mahony (P)2021 Head of Zeus

Poetic

I enjoyed the voice. Listening was more like viewing a series of photographs than reading a single narrative. It was an interesting mixture of humor and grief. I will probably listen to it again. It may have stronger appeal and be more relatable to those us who work in hospitals because many hidden understandings were left unsaid.