Books: The Lady Doctor

It’s a brave move for a male doctor, in today’s highly sensitive climate, to dare to tell the story of Lois, a 40-year-old female divorcée, salaried GP, and sexual health doctor. The Lady Doctor, follow-up to Ian Williams’s debut The Bad Doctor, is a fast-paced graphic novel, which follows the twists and turns of ‘lady’ doctor Lois’s work and home life in a rural Welsh community.

Should she go into partnership with her two male colleagues who see her as a safe bet now her biological clock has run out? What to do about her estranged mother who’s suddenly back in touch and needing a liver transplant? And then there are her one-night-stands and dysfunctional relationships, her dubious coping mechanisms, the nippings-out for a smoke, the downing of wine after work, not to mention the drug addicts and STI-ridden patients who keep knocking on her clinical door.

Weaving its way through the ethically challenging antics of this book is a very human, at times hilarious, and insightful narrative of a woman you can’t help but grow to love. The messy mix of Lois’s personal brokenness and that of her patients is touching, and the issue of addiction, in its many forms, is faced head on. Important ethical and professional issues are tackled with a lightness of touch through comic art, a medium that doesn’t distract from their weightiness. And the GP surgeries represented in cartoon form had me laughing out loud. The professional insights of Ian Williams, who was a GP for 20 years, are apparent throughout.

But does Lois epitomise ‘lady doctors’? I hope not! Does she face realistic professional challenges in her life? Oh yes. And does this male doctor/author/artist get away with it? As far as I’m concerned, yes, he does … by the skin of his teeth!

• © British Journal of General Practice 2019