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Irish Country #6

A Dublin Student Doctor

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Patrick Taylor€™s devoted readers know Doctor Fingal Flahertie O€™Reilly as a pugnacious general practitioner in the quaint Irish village of Ballybucklebo. Now Taylor turns back the clock to give us a portrait of the young Fingal€”and show us the pivotal events that shaped the man he would become.In the 1930s, fresh from a stint in the Royal Navy Reserve, and against the wishes of his disapproving father, Fingal O€™Reilly goes to Dublin to study medicine. Fingal and his fellow aspiring doctors face the arduous demands of Trinity College and Sir Patrick Dun€™s Hospital. The hours are long and the cases challenging, but Fingal manages to find time to box and play rugby€”and to romance a fetching, gray-eyed nurse named Kitty O€™Hallorhan. Dublin is a city of slums and tenements, where brutal poverty breeds diseases that the limited medical knowledge of the time is often ill-equipped to handle. His teachers warn Fingal not to become too a

492 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

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About the author

Patrick Taylor

79 books1,349 followers
There is more than one author with this name

Patrick Taylor, M.D., is the author of the Irish Country books, including An Irish Country Doctor, An Irish Country Village, An Irish Country Christmas, An Irish Country Girl, and An Irish Country Courtship. Taylor was born and raised in Bangor, County Down, in Northern Ireland. After qualifying as a specialist in 1969, he worked in Canada for thirty-one years. He now lives on Saltspring Island, British Columbia.

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5 stars
1,833 (39%)
4 stars
1,965 (42%)
3 stars
682 (14%)
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83 (1%)
1 star
31 (<1%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 456 reviews
Profile Image for Julie.
2,436 reviews34 followers
June 26, 2023
This is a real treat for followers of the Irish Country Doctor of the quaint Irish village of Ballybucklebo. Patrick Taylor takes us back in time to Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly's student days in Dublin, Ireland. I became engrossed in the cases he and his fellow students tackled and it was fun to learn of the early days of his romance with Kitty O'Hallorhan. I look forward to the next volume in the series.
Profile Image for Kathryn.
857 reviews
February 5, 2016
I thought the previous book in this series was the best up to this point, but it has been eclipsed by this next one in the series! I loved the way Dublin of the 1930s is weaved into 1960s Ballybucklebo and Belfast, but knowing what I know now of Doctor Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly makes me want to go back and re-read some of the other books!
Profile Image for Donna.
4,451 reviews147 followers
July 26, 2018
If you are a doctor, you might like this one.

If you like the medical jargon (ie: mumbo jumbo) that hot TV doctors use (and if you have a vivid imagination) you might like this one.

I, on the other hand, didn't love it. It was too procedural with all the medical stuff.
The procedures....seriously....step by little step were explained. I got to read things that were of no interest to me. They didn't move the story forward or define the characters. It was like a LONG side note. I didn't need convincing that the guy was a doctor (or soon to be doctor). I believed the author the first time, the second time and the 20th time, etc.

I did like the Irish accent of the narrator and the Irish details. I also liked the MC's home life and the complicated relationships within. So 2 stars.
Profile Image for Robyn.
2,358 reviews132 followers
April 3, 2022
A DUBLIN STUDENT DOCTOR
Patrick Taylor

A series and I start on book 6! Ok, but you can read this as a stand-alone book, and I did. I always enjoy books that are set in England, Scotland, or Ireland, they are just so, cozy? Yep, that's the word, cozy. I found this one actually no different. I really loved the split timeline so that the back story of the characters was revealed and colored in. Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly is just the kind of doctor everyone wants as their GP and getting to "see" him before medical school and while in school really fleshes him out.

The book starts in 1930s when Fingal is leaving to go to medical school, then picks up with his pals at medical school. I really enjoyed the challenges faced and overcome, but some of the procedures might have been left out so that the book moved just a click faster.

I did enjoy the depiction of Dublin and I read the book with my own overlayed accent, which was fun. My mother was a surgical nurse so I grew up at the dinner table hearing about all of the procedures done that day. My favorite was the passage when he was trying to do his final and ended up taking a medical history from the funny lady who had been pg 20 times. I appreciated the generous and kind character of Fingal, he is a real hero.

4 stars

Happy Reading!

Profile Image for Diana.
1,541 reviews85 followers
September 17, 2019
This book is the sixth in a wonderful series. This series is one that once I start reading, I don't put the book down until it's finished. These books are very entertaining, and I'm glad they were recommended to me. If you enjoy James Herriot or Richard Gordon these books are for you.
Re-read 2018
This book gives you the background of Doctor Fingal O'Reily. It goes through his student days and into the beginning of the second world war when many had to put their lives and studies on hold to go to the front lines.
Profile Image for Patricia.
524 reviews124 followers
December 8, 2012
I really enjoyed reading this novel which takes place in the 1930's The story centers around Fingal O'Reilly as he attends Trinity College and a hospital. There are sorts of cases to be solved, a lot of which are caused by diseases started by terrible poverty which is rampant in Dublin. An excellent read, and I encourage all of my friends to give it a try!
Profile Image for Sverre.
424 reviews32 followers
April 25, 2013
==Diagnostic case studies interspersed by narrative==
Patrick Taylor enjoys a fervent following of loyal fans for his prolific Irish Country novels so I was intrigued. This, the sixth in the series, is somewhat of a retroactive prequel about Doctor Fingal Flaherty O'Reilly's student days. It was the first of his novels I have read and maybe I realized too late that this was the wrong place to jump on board. My second mistake was buying a book about a student doctor's medical studies written by "a distinguished medical researcher" (as per the jacket blurb).

This book for me was more like diagnostic case studies and medical treatments interspersed by the required doses of prosaic narrative to tie it together. True, I should have been forewarned by the title of the book, but nevertheless I said to myself numerous times that "this Dr Taylor is a bit of a show-off" giving the readers the A-to-Z of every ailment and complication. Could I be excused for buying the book with the hope of being entertained, instead of taking up medicine? So, I felt there was a surfeit of medical detail in this novel and rather a lack of the elements that make a novel great. There is a lot of dialogue in the book but so much of it is trivial banter between friends, shooting-the-breeze stuff. Even when dramatic events were happening I had difficulty being emotionally committed.

Not having read the previous books I became confused at the end where in the present time frame (1965) Fingal and Kitty are not married but clearly attracted to one another. But, just a few pages before that, in the earlier time frame (the 1930's), the couple had reunited after previously breaking up and were on the their way to meet his family so that he could introduce her to them [as his intended]. I had to return to the first chapter to try to sort out that conundrum. The ending should have clarified how their relationship went nowhere in the 30's. I am not getting another book to find out.

Taylor can be given top marks for his knowledge of Irish colloquial localisms and authenticity. An appendix (no medical reference intended) contains a fifteen page glossary. Reading it makes either a strong argument for the wonderful richness of English as it is so diversely spoken around the world, or makes a logical proposition that Esperanto could be put to good use as a communicative tool by English speakers from diverse cultures. I am sorry, but as a non-medical professional I found this book to be quite boring and bland, not devoid of merit but one for loyal followers of the series, fans of the author's writing style and, especially, the medically inclined.
Profile Image for Obsidian.
3,156 reviews1,121 followers
August 18, 2020
This was a great look back at Dr. Fingal O'Reilly as he attends Trinity College and begins his life his novel which takes place in the 1930's The story centers around Fingal O'Reilly as he attends Trinity College in order to study medicine. Fingal is dealing with his father's disapproval of his chosen profession as well as trying to get settled in Dublin. We get to see the beginnings of his friendships with other doctors/surgeons who are mentioned and how he first met Kitty. Definitely read this one if you want to know more about Fingal's history. Things that occur in this book will be referenced in later books so it's a good one to make sure you read.

"A Dublin Student Doctor" follows Fingal and his trials as he attends Trinity College. We get to see Taylor's views of Dublin in the 1930s and the tenements that many in the city were forced to live in. We also get to see how Fingal cares about his patients and has a hard time with juggling his personal life while also pursuing his dream of being a doctor.

You get a lot of Fingal in this one and that was definitely welcomed by me. We have Fingal returning from the races with Kitty, Barry, and Mrs. Kincaid. They come upon Donal who has been hurt on his motorbike. Fingal takes charge as he usually does and follows Donal to the hospital. This causes Fingal to reminiscence on his times in Dublin when he was training to be a doctor.

I will say the writing was good, but very technical. If you don't want to read about how doctors treated things in the past, this is not the book for you. I was personally fascinated by what I was reading. I would say though that the flow was a bit tricky. Taylor goes from the past to present day in this one. This is a narrative trick that he will embrace in future books. It didn't bother me here, but it does in later books.
402 reviews6 followers
November 9, 2011
Fingel Flahertie O'Reilly is back but this is basically a prequel to the series. He and his lady friend, Kitty, are out for a drive when they come upon a bike accident involving his patient, Donal. They follow the ambulance to the hospital in Dublin where he obtained his medical training. As Fingal is waiting to hear about Donal's condition, he falls asleep and dreams about his old days there, in the 1930's, when he and his buddies suffered through grueling classes and medical procedures. It is not dry though, because we learn about his family, his fellow students, and of his relationship with Nurse Kitty. My hope is that Mr. Taylor keeps writing these stories as fast as he can because I thoroughly enjoy them. I expect he has another story in him that will tell us about Fingal's life during World War II and in the '50's. The author states in the forward that he considers his books to be gentle and this is not and that is due to the vivid descriptions of diseases and treatments used in that time, before penicillin was approved as a drug, and prior to the medical advancements we know today. Fingal, as always, is a big, cuddly teddy bear of a guy with a gruff demeanor when needed.
34 reviews2 followers
April 2, 2013
This is one of a series of books about doctors in Ireland around the 1960`s. This particular book is about how the older doctor Fingal got started in medicine in the 1930`s as a student at Trinity medical college. A great series. The characters are all real. This author has created a good series of books and I highly recommend them.
Profile Image for Shannon.
1,250 reviews42 followers
February 16, 2021
I love learning the back story of these characters and I don't overly mind the super technical explanations of medical procedures, but these books are just too slow to be more than 3 stars for me. It's a 250 page book elongated into over 400 pages. It just doesn't need all the extra fluff. Some of the fluff is fun, some of it is just too much.
362 reviews
January 20, 2021
3.6* ..a comfortable, easy going book about village life in Ireland and dreams of becoming a doctor. It takes the reader from turbulent times of the 1930’s to times of advancement in the 1960’s.
I smiled at the local flavor and expressions of the country folks and their generous spirits, despite being dirt poor. And, I commiserated with the young medical students trying their best to become doctors and help others.
It’s 500 pages, but will transport you to another time and place.
Profile Image for Kate.
2,244 reviews1 follower
August 14, 2019
"Doctor Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly, the pugnacious general practitioner in the Irish village of Ballybucklebo, had become a favorite of thousands of readers. Now Patrick Taylor reveals the pivotal events from O'Reilly's youth that shaped the man he would become.

"In the 1930s, Fingal O'Reilly and his fellow medical students face the arduous demands of Dublin's Trinity College and Sir Patrick Dun's Hospital. The hours are long and the cases challenging, but Fingal manages to find time to box and play rugby -- and to romance a fetching, gray-eyed nurse named Kitty O'Hallorhan.

"Dublin is a city of slums and tenements, where brutal poverty breeds diseases that the limited medical knowledge of the time is often ill-equipped to handle. Although Fingal's teachers warn him not to become attached to his patients, can he truly harden himself to the suffering all around him -- or can he find a way to care for his patients without breaking his heart?"
~~back cover

Yes, a very enjoyable journey through O'Reily's trials and travails in medical school, and his meeting Kitty and their slowly developing relationship. I read this book almost straight through because I wanted the answer to several burning questions ... and they weren't there. Well, there's always the next book to hope provides the answers, isn't there?

I must say that the author gives fascinating details about the medical knowledge available in the 1930s, and the lack of knowledge, modern antibiotics, and treatments. Heartbreaking, but it does make the reader grateful for the state of today's medical knowledge and availability.

Profile Image for Eden.
2,163 reviews
July 7, 2020
2020 bk 230. My return to the Patrick Taylor's world was a look at the world of Ireland in the 1920's and 1930's, a world far different from the post WWII world that I have known. When his father refuses to fund Finegal's enrollment in Medical School, his brother has a suggestion. After three years in the Merchant Marine and enrollment in the naval reserves, Finegal returns to Dublin to enroll in the medical school at Trinity. This book recounts stories of those 5 years spent study, training, dating, and ruby. Along the story is the one of his father's eventual change of heart about his career and the devastating illness that will end a family unit. Watching Finegal grow from a young man whose self-confidence took a blow, into a very competent and caring physician was a delight. A feel-good read.
Profile Image for Dina.
258 reviews4 followers
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March 30, 2017
I am really enjoying this series and this book did a wonderful job of continuing the story in the 1960s but mainly focusing on Dr. Fingal's experiences at a medical student 30 years earlier. It fleshes out his relationship with his parents and brother, his future wife, as well as the medical students he studied with. It also tells a lot about social conditions in Ireland in the 1930s and concerns about HItler.
280 reviews1 follower
July 6, 2022
It was good to discover when, where and why and how Dr O'Reilly had become a doctor. I like the way the author uses the different accents and language nuances abundant in Ireland. I'm thankful for the glossary so the reader can find the meanings to so many unfamiliar words and phrases. Look forward to continuing with the series.
889 reviews31 followers
October 2, 2023
This book starts in the present when Fingal Flahertie O’Reilly is already a Doctor in his village of Ballybucklebo, Ireland! Because of a motorcycle accident, he is at the hospital where all his pals of yesteryear are doctors and he begins to reminisce of his student years! This book is about the study of medicine and you have to like this type of information which I do! It doesn’t have as much of the Irish life as Taylor’s other books have, but the Irish lilt is obvious ☘️🥸
Profile Image for Sarah.
123 reviews1 follower
June 17, 2022
After a great day at the races, Doctor O’Reilly comes across a patient of his in an accident and accompanies them to the hospital. While waiting for results O’Reilly remember his time in Dublin where he trained to be a doctor. A good read!

For the full review, check out my blog (link in bio).
724 reviews6 followers
August 18, 2022
This was so good! In this one, we get to go back in time to when Fingal Flattery O'Reilly was a student doctor.

First off, I'm glad that Fingal's father was able to come around to the idea of Fingal being. I esspecially loved the part when Fingal helps his father out medically.

We also get to see how Fingal and Kitty first meet. I'm really glad that Fingal's previous relationship ended, because, he got to meet Kitty.

I found the fact that the student gor to gain some experience by working in a actual hospital.

Overall, another 5 star read in this fantastic series!!!
Profile Image for Katsmewsings .
804 reviews14 followers
March 6, 2022
My favourite of the series so far. Loved learning about Fingal’s past!
Profile Image for Nikki.
97 reviews4 followers
January 21, 2018
This is a nice story. No sex, no cussing, no violence. I liked it fine, although I usually read fast paced thrillers or mysteries, so it was a bit slow for me. However, I would read more from this author.
Profile Image for Bridget.
1,147 reviews18 followers
November 4, 2012
At this point, you probably know that I am a big fan of this series. This particular installment provides the back story of one of the main characters, Dr. Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly.

There was a lot here that was interesting, and I like that Patrick Taylor is fleshing out the primary characters in these novels. In the case of O'Reilly, we learn that his father was staunchly opposed to his decision to study to become a doctor - his father was determined that he should study a field that was "worthy" of his intelligence. Which then explains to the reader why O'Reilly had served in the navy, so that he could save money to pay for his own education when his father refused to pay for medical school. His school friends are those who have been mentioned in previous books, who are now specialists in their respective fields. And we witness his first meeting with, and subsequent on/off relationship with Kitty O'Hallorhan.

I do have to say that reading this book was especially enjoyable, as I read it while we were visiting Ireland. Being able to be surrounded by places he mentioned in the book was just such a kick!

If you are a fan of the series, you'll likely enjoy this book. If you haven't started reading the series, you really should ...
Profile Image for Lynne.
Author 17 books12 followers
August 18, 2015
Whenever I read a book, I try to notice how it makes me feel, or what it makes me think about. This book, however, had no impact at all. It's the celery of novels; it takes more effort to read than it gives back.

The story centres around Fingal O'Reilly, switching back and forth between O'Reilly's medical school days and his present-day life as a doctor. It appears to be a prequel to a series of books about Dr. O'Reilly's medical practice. Perhaps if I'd read the other books in the series, I'd have gotten more out of this particular addition to the body of work.

I really felt as if the author wanted to continue the story of the character but had nothing new to say about his present situation, and so flashed back to an earlier time instead. The book does not stand alone as an interesting novel, though as I said, it might be much more satisfying to readers who know the characters from previous books.

To me, it wasn't unpleasant to read, but it was utterly forgettable.
Profile Image for Leslie Zampetti.
1,032 reviews1 follower
November 5, 2011
Patrick Taylor is the rare writer able to create a compelling series and then keep it fresh while still using the same beloved characters and setting. In his latest Irish Country novel, the reader is transported to Dublin of the 1930's and Fingal Flahertie O'Reilly's struggles to become qualified in medicine. The reader is treated to Dr. O'Reilly as a young man, along with Kitty O'Hallorhan, and the beginning of the romance which was rekindled in the earlier novels (where the characters are older and wiser).

A comfortable and thoroughly enjoyable read...
Profile Image for Toni Laliberte.
572 reviews37 followers
April 14, 2018
I loved this book, for the sheer knowledge it gives and it's told in a way not to bore or overwhelm, the reader. Patrick Taylor is an exceptional storyteller.
I enjoyed learning about Dr. O'Reilly's family and friends and his university days and internships. It's all so fascinating learning about how medicine was taught and how barbaric, even in the 30's, procedures and healing was. Hospitals, doctors, nurses, medicines, boy they've come a long way! I'm glad Kitty and Fingal are back together and are getting married. On to the next book and back to Ballybucklebo.
Profile Image for Jan Sample.
33 reviews
March 23, 2012
Better than the Irish country Christmas - Description of 1930's medicine fascinating - I forget how much medicine has changed in the last 60 years!
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