This is a hauntingly moving memoir of the relationship between a cadaver named Eve and the first-year medical student who cuts her open. Christine Montross brings an uncommon perspective to the emotional difficulty of the first year of medical school, and her disturbing, often entertaining anecdotes enrich this exquisitely crafted memoir, endowing an eerie beauty to the world of a doctor-in-training. The Washington Post - Rachel Hartigan Shea Montross was a poet before she was a doctor, and her language in Body of Work, an exceptionally thoughtful memoir about the first semester of medical school, is as precise as her scalpel cuts become by the final exam…We should be grateful, tooespecially those of us who squirm away from the physical truths of our existencefor this beautiful book and the glimpse it offers of a place off limits to anyone without Montross's clearsighted courage.
Preface: Mystery 1Bone Box 7First Cut 15Breath and Blood 31Anatomical Precedence 45Origins of a Corpse 63In Pursuit of Wonder 93The Bodies of Strangers 119Toll 137The Discomfort of Doctoring 163An Unsteady Balance 183Pelvis 211Dismantled 251Epilogue: Good-bye 291Bibliography 293Acknowledgments 296