Best-selling author Martha Moody, a licensed physician, knows a thing or two about medical offices. She’s also quite adept at creating unique, memorable characters whose stories rivet the reader, compelling them to turn one page after the next.
The Office of Desire features five members of a medical office whose lives become more intertwined and interpersonal than proves healthy for both them and the practice.
Contrary to images the title might suggest, Moody says once she completed and re-read the book, she realized she had written about grief and death. True, there are morose moments in the book, but they ring true, rather than seeming forced.
For example, when the wife of one of the two doctors in the practices dies after a protracted illness, his inability to think, function, or emote later is all too real. Any reader who has experienced the loss of a loved one cannot help but identify with the boneshaking sorrow that physician felt.
Moody penned the novel from the perspectives of one of the physicians and Caroline, the office receptionist. Interestingly, one of the pitfalls Caroline faces throughout the book is that due to an accident, she wears a leg prosthesis. Comical were the moments when Moody describes Caroline hopping to the restroom in the middle of the night, too lazy to don her leg to make the journey that much easier. Caroline is matter of fact about her disability, and her strength proves to be the steel holding everyone in the book together.
The Office of Desire offers an interesting glimpse into what really happens beyond the waiting room, behind that sliding glass window at the doctor’s office.
