Book Review - Black Flies by Shannon Burke

Synopsis: Black Flies is the story of paramedic Ollie Cross & his first year on the job in mid-90's New York. It is a ground's eye view of life on the streets: the shoot-outs, the bad cops, the unhinged medics, the hopeless patients, the dark humor in bizarre circumstances, & one medic's struggle to balance his desire to help against his own growing callousness. It is the story of lives that hang in the balance, & of a single job with a misdiagnosed newborn that sends Cross & his partner into a life-changing struggle between good & evil.

First Line: "I worked in Harlem & the place had begun to annoy me: the gangs of loud-mouthed kids all yowling at each other & goofing twenty-four hours a day, skels with forty-ouncers strolling in front of us to show that no one not even an ambulance could make them hurry, kids tugging at our shirts saying what's wrong, what's wrong, is someone dead, what's wrong, the crackheads, the junkies, & the drunks dropping in the worst places - abandoned buildings, subway tracks, the Harlem River."

Random Quote: "Ten minutes later we were all standing at the back of the ambulance."

Review: A slim, minimalist little bite of a novel about paramedics in Harlem in the mid-nineties. The author draws on his own life experience in a book filled with scatter shot impressi

Image by Professor Bop via Flickr

ons - much the way you might imagine a day as a paramedic might be.

The characters & the sense of place are clear & drawn with depth despite the relative brevity of the book. These people are real & you care about them & about what happens to them, around them, because of them. This book reminds me a bit of Bringing Out the Dead, both the book (by Joe Connelly) & the movie (Martin Scorcese), which I also really enjoyed.

This is a book that offers no answers & many questions, but one that mostly takes you for an ambulance ride through parts of a city that have been left behind. Beautiful, insightful, unforgettable - I really loved this book.