Bedside Reading

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A very warm welcome today to Emma Vardy to talk about Pearl Buck's The Child Who Never Grew, a memoir. I'm releasing it this week because this week on 28th of June, it is International PKU Day. As you will find there is a lot to think about in terms of phenylketonuria and also the fact that eventually, after the end of this book, and and and when science had advanced, Pearl S. Buck's daughter, Carol, who she writes very movingly and beautifully about in this book, was recognized to have PKU. In a time when nobody really knew about it, nobody knew about low protein diets, there weren't the drugs, and the outcomes for children with PKU was incredibly, incredibly different to how it is at the moment.

Many of us have heard of PKU. We think of it as an autosomal recessive condition. We know that it's tested for in the newborn blood spot test. We know that it's something to do with protein. And every so often you pick up a can of a fizzy drink and it says "a source of phenylalanine" and we think, "oh, what's all that all about?" I hope that not only might I persuade you to read The Child That Never Grew and and to think about Pearl's experiences, and but also hoping my conversation with Emma will give you some really good going accidental CPD on the subject of PKU.
https://www.espku.org/2026/05/04/international-pku-day-2026-breaking-the-silence-on-mental-health-in-pku/
https://nspku.org/

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Natalie Adler's debut novel, Waiting on a Friend, is a joy. It is a story about a young woman, Renata, living in New York's East Village in the early 80s during the AIDS crisis.

There are stories of people.  There is injustice. There are ghosts. I don't normally like ghosts but I love the ghost angle of this book. If you're looking for a novel, which is a cross between The Great Believers, Rent, and It's a Sin, this is the book for you. It is brilliantly funny. It is moving. There's so much to think about. And it's been an absolute joy to talk to Natalie herself about it today for one of my Pride Month special episodes.

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It's a real pleasure today to welcome back Sarah Marwick, GP and Portfolio Career Doctor, to talk about Malcolm Gladwell's The Revenge of the Tipping Point. Malcolm Gladwell is such a brilliant and entertaining writer, and it is such a great book. There are so many stories. focusing on epidemics and social contagions. I've thoroughly enjoyed talking about the book with Sarah and thinking about those themes which are really relevant to us as clinicians working in the health service.

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I've got a special episode today as part of June 2026, Pride Month. A warm welcome to Isaac Grivalja We're talking about his debut novel, Six and a Half Days in the City, which is a very quick and compelling read, which follows a young Latino bisexual EMT as he gets on a plane from his home in California to New York for a week of leave.
He's going to spend it with two of his oldest friends. And we have a real sense of his unmasking and freedom. And then, unfortunately, the unravelling that ends up coming with that and really thinking about his need to express himself and get away from the pressures of his work and life and the expectations of him at home.

It's a really interesting book. And I've really enjoyed talking to Isaac about how he wrote it. How much of himself is in Cameron? and the reasons for making sure that we are all seen in fiction because you can't be what you can't see.

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When I first really started thinking about medical humanities, torytelling and "accidental CPD", about 14 years ago, I set up the Chesterfield Medical Humanities Book Club, which is still running. The very first book that we talked about was Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, which I had read before when it first came out and which I went back to and loved all over again.

So when I started bedside reading, I really thought that someone very early on would say, we must talk about Cutting for Stone. And no one did. I didn't push anybody because I knew it had to be the right time. Obviously it's always the guest's choice of what people talk about when they come on this podcast and it was a great delight to get a message from Alice Deasy a few months ago to say, that she had read Cutting for Stone, that she couldn't stop thinking about it, that she couldn't stop talking about it, that she couldn't stop recommending it to people, and that maybe she could come and talk about it on the podcast. I have had a brilliant time rediscovering this novel and talking to Alice.