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Overview
Julie Holland thought she knew what crazy was.
Then she came to Bellevue.
New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, the oldest public hospital in the United States, has a tradition of “serving the underserved” that dates back to 1736. For nine eventful years, Dr. Holland was the weekend physician in charge of Bellevue’s psychiatric emergency room, a one-woman front line charged with assessing and treating some of the city’s most vulnerable and troubled citizens, its forgotten and forsaken—and its criminally insane. Deciding who gets locked up and who gets talked down would be an awesome responsibility for most people. For Julie Holland, it was just another day at the office.
In an absorbing memoir laced with humor, Holland provides an unvarnished look at life in the psych ER, recounting stories from her vast case files that are alternately terrifying, tragically comic, and profoundly moving: the serial killer, the naked man barking like a dog in Times Square, the schizophrenic begging for an injection of club soda to quiet the voices in his head, the subway conductor who watched a young woman pushed into the path of his train. As Holland comes to understand, the degree to which someone can lose his or her mind is infinite, and each patient’s pain leaves a mark on her as well—as does the cancer battle of a fellow doctor who is both her best friend and her most trusted mentor.
Writing with uncommon candor about her life both inside and outside the hospital—her professional struggles, personal relationships, and the therapy sessions that help her crack the hard shell she’s formed to keep the pain at bay—Holland supplies not only a page-turner with all the fast-paced immediacy of a TV medical drama but also a fascinating glimpse into the inner lives of doctors who struggle to maintain perspective in a world where sanity is in the eye of the beholder.
Synopsis
Julie Holland thought she knew what crazy was. Then she came to Bellevue. For nine eventful years, Dr. Holland was the weekend physician in charge of Bellevue's psychiatric emergency room. Deciding who gets locked up and who gets talked down would be an awesome responsibility for most people. For her, it was just another day at the office...
In an absorbing memoir laced with humor, Holland provides an unvarnished look at life in the Psych ER, recounting stories from her vast case file that are alternately terrifying, tragically comic, and profoundly moving. As Holland comes to understand, the degree to which someone can lose his or her mind is infinite, and each patient's pain leaves a mark on her as well—as does the cancer battle of a fellow doctor who is both her best friend and her most trusted mentor.
Writing with uncommon candor about her life both inside and outside the hospital, Holland supplies a fascinating glimpse into the inner lives of doctors, struggling to maintain perspective in a world where sanity is in the eye of the beholder.
Publishers Weekly
In this disjointed memoir, Holland describes her nine-year odyssey as a doctor on the night shift at New York City's Bellevue hospital, a name that has become synonymous with insanity. Holland met a bewildering assortment of drunks, sociopaths, schizophrenics and homeless people malingering in hope of a warm place to crash. As the physician in charge of the psychiatric emergency room, the hard-boiled Holland acted as gatekeeper, deciding who would be sent upstairs to the psych ward, to Central Booking or back to the streets. The book also covers Holland's personal life from her student days as a wannabe rock star to her psychotherapy sessions, her sexual escapades and her marriage and birth of her children. Holland captures the rhythms and routines of the E.R. with its unbearable suffering, petty jealousies and gallows humor. She is less successful at maintaining any kind of narrative continuity. Chapters generally run only a couple of pages and often depict random anecdotes that most likely sound better than they read. (Oct.)
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
One wonders how Julie Holland did it. For nine years, she worked the infamous weekend night shift at New York's Bellevue Hospital, not only the oldest public health institution in the country but also its famously busy psychiatric facility. Every night, dozens of patients were brought in: "slashers," "jumpers," "overdosers," suicidal bag ladies, people running naked on the street. The staff must quickly evaluate them, cope with their problems as best they can, and send them back into the margins of society. Dr. Holland's Weekends at Bellevue re-creates a place where even TV writers would not dare to go.Publishers Weekly
In this disjointed memoir, Holland describes her nine-year odyssey as a doctor on the night shift at New York City's Bellevue hospital, a name that has become synonymous with insanity. Holland met a bewildering assortment of drunks, sociopaths, schizophrenics and homeless people malingering in hope of a warm place to crash. As the physician in charge of the psychiatric emergency room, the hard-boiled Holland acted as gatekeeper, deciding who would be sent upstairs to the psych ward, to Central Booking or back to the streets. The book also covers Holland's personal life from her student days as a wannabe rock star to her psychotherapy sessions, her sexual escapades and her marriage and birth of her children. Holland captures the rhythms and routines of the E.R. with its unbearable suffering, petty jealousies and gallows humor. She is less successful at maintaining any kind of narrative continuity. Chapters generally run only a couple of pages and often depict random anecdotes that most likely sound better than they read. (Oct.)Kirkus Reviews
Psychiatrist Holland recounts nine years working the weekend shift in the emergency room of one of the nation's iconic psychiatric hospitals. When she started her job at the Bellevue psych ER, 30-year-old Holland (editor: Ecstasy: The Complete Guide, 2001) was single, intelligent and tough. Prisoners in chains, battered women, the homeless, desperate and delusional-all became an exercise in how quickly a patient could be treated and released. Readers meet an endless procession of these broken souls, some more sympathetic than others, and get a sense of the difficulty of the author's job. Holland describes how the staff competed to identify which patients were feigning symptoms to score a warm bed and hot meal, until the author, shaken after a scary incident, realized that "even the lying patients are still coming to the hospital because they are in need. Don't send them away empty-handed." Unfortunately, few of the patients' stories are particularly memorable, and Holland misses countless opportunities to make them so. Because she is so focused on her journey from tough girl to "working mother of two with a heart of mush," the take-home message from each of these vignettes, when there is one, almost always relates only to the narrator-who, despite this, does not come across as a particularly self-aware storyteller. There are some moving moments of genuine insight, but they are dulled by so much extraneous detail that everything starts to feel arbitrary. A more focused narrative, with half as many patients whose stories carried twice as much weight, would have made for a much stronger book. Despite a promising premise and a few fascinating stories, the book is ill-focused and overlong.Agent: Kirsten Manges/Kirsten Manges LiteraryFrom the Publisher
“In Weekends at Bellevue [Julie Holland] tells the story of her own journey through medical school, residency, and beyond, and at the same time gives us startling insights into minds so damaged, human beings rendered so helpless by their own demons, that entities resembling souls can’t help but shine through. It’s a thrilling and meaningful trip. As I turned the pages I found myself thinking, over and over, Oh, poor novelist that you are, you really can’t make this stuff up.” —Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours and Specimen Days"Weekends at Bellevue is a gem of a memoir. Holland takes us for a ride through the psych ER that is at once wild and poignant, a ride that leaves deep tracks in even the healthiest of minds."—Katrina Firlik, MD, author of Another Day in the Frontal Lobe: A Brain Surgeon Exposes Life on the Inside
“For anyone who has ever wondered what goes on in the mind of a psychiatrist, and what happens behind the walls of an institution like Bellevue, this is the book for you. An extraordinary insider's look at the typical days and nights of that most extraordinary place, written with a rare combination of toughness, tenderness, and outrageous humor, this book is a fast read that you will savor long after you have put it down.”—Andrew Weil, M.D., author of Why Our Health Matters
“Equal parts affecting, jaw-dropping, and engrossing.”—Booklist