I read first this book shortly after its initial publication. The impact was enormous. I even went to a signing event an hour away from where I lived. What made this book great was that not only it talked about the real tragedy in rural, little educated America, that AIDS wrought there, but it was finely written, with feeling, and instructive. Such a rare blend in this type of litterture. This was not a report from the front, it was also the journey of a man whose whole life principles are challenged, and changed in front of other people's tragedy. Today, as I read it again, it has already that flavor of historical witnessing, but its emotion is still fresh. For those of us that are blase about too many tragedies in our lifes, we could read this book again to regain some of the compassion that we might have misplaced as our everyday life demanded our atention.

Dr. Verghese beautifully captures the Appalachian essence of innocence and trust, and the clash that happens when a feared viral intruder puts its mark on relatives and neighbors. The exposure and initiation of a foreigner to country ways and mindset makes for some comical moments. The text is very creative, expressive and easy to read

"My Own Country" combines medical fact with compelling personal history in a way that reveals the true nature of human understanding for what is "foreign" to us all. Dr. Abraham Verghese comes to rural Tennessee as the foreign graduate of a foreign medical school; rural Tennessee being one of the few areas that will allow him to practice in the United States. At the time of his arrival, the AIDS epidemic arrives as well. Dr. Verghese relates the stories of the victims and their families in the setting of his own acceptance among these bewildered people. Through careful detail, Dr. Verghese is accepted among the citizens of Johnson City, Tennessee, just as they slowly come to accept the reality of the AIDS virus and its consequences in their lives. Told in language easily understood by non-medically trained readers, this story becomes a history of our people and their ability to adapt to difficult and heart-rending life experiences. Dr. Verghese celebrates the ability of the human spirit to accept disease and its consequences while he uses his keen sense of observation to show his own acceptance among these "new people." Dr. Verghese's ability for insight into the pain and suffering of patients families and the ultimate triumph of our compasionate nature is beautifully rendered. This book cannot be recommended highly enough for the many areas in which it succeeds. Ultimately, the book becomes a history of AIDS, medicine and the way both interact with victims who little understand the disease itself.

This book is great. It is a must read for anyone who has tested positive for HIV,has aids,or knows anyone who are in either of these situations. All others not in any of these categories, will be touch by the way that Dr. Mahlon Johnson's opens up his heart and shares even the most intimate thoughts and details of his life as he goes about "working on a miracle". He explains in a very understandable way exactly how he waged war on the virus that had invaded his body. He shares how the courage of one person who touch his life renewed his strength and inspired him to continue his battle with the enemy. So much to learn from this book.

I read the book and i think is a extraordinary human review of a patient with aids, he showed to us how difficult is live with this desease and the important role of hope in the course of the desease. Creo que es una obra recomendada para todo paciente con VIH/SIDA.

How sad that this beautiful, important collection of stories is already out of print, having only been published in 1995. With such "important" writers as Susan Sontag and Paul Monette and David Leavitt as contributors, this compilation is one that must be read and savored. The title refers, obviously, to the way that AIDS has forced itself into the daily lives of all of us. Who among us does not know someone who is now ill or who has already died of this disease? In point of fact, several of the writers in this volume are dead. But the volume is not a polemic. It is a wonderful, moving, at times funny, entertaining collection. My personal favorite is "In The Gloaming" by a writer I had previously never encountered: Alice Elliott Dark. Write to Citadel Press and get this book re-printed. A portion of its sale is donated to AMFAR and a program to help writers with HIV/AIDS.

Foreign-born physicians, especially South Asian ones such as the author of this remarkable memoir, frequently are perceived as even more arrogant, distant, and smug about their high status and income in rural areas than are urban, American-born ones. Verghese, who grew up in Ethiopia and who finished medical school in his (Christian) parents' homeland of India, clearly describes the allocation of medical personnel in the US. He also understands the resentments by those of old stock, poor white patient of affluent foreign-born doctors. As the title indicates, Verghese wanted to feel at home where he chose to settle, to provide his sons a sense of belonging in one place, a sense that he had not had in his own peripatetic life. Like his patients, however, he was never certain that seeming acceptance was was more than provisional.

This insightful, lyrical, and moving book provides a vivid account of being an alien doctor in rural America dealing with a terrifying disease that was (and is) also perceived as alien, as something that, in the view of many, other kinds of people contract and probably deserve. Acute analyses of American (including Asian-American) arrangements and assumptions underlie a poignant narrative of AIDS coming to the northeastern Tennessee hills. Verghese shares Oliver Sacks's ability to engage readers in the horror and the mystery of sufferings for which physicians have no magic bullets. As Paul Farmer, another physician who made a difference, showed in _AIDS and Accusation_, how a society responds to AIDS illuminates much about the society, not only how medical services are organized and financed in it. Verghese shows strengths as well as weaknesses in rural Southeastern American backwaters. He also illuminates connections from such seemingly isolated places to the larger society and ties of blood to distant urban centers where gay men sought refuge.

Abraham Verghese is that rare person who can let praise and criticism into his thoughts, but not let it stop him from going where he means to go.

This beautiful book relates his experience as an "outsider" doctor (ethnically Indian, raised in Ethiopia) in a small city in Tennessee, dealing with the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic. He's brave enough to admit that he's uncomfortable setting foot in a gay bar to talk about AIDS prevention and brave enough to do it anyway. He's brave to admit that many medical professionals consider his specialty (infectious diseases) a second-class citizen to specialties involving invasive procedures. He's also brave enough to admit that he's a little bit jealous of the surgeons whose work is emotionally simpler and way more lucrative than his own.

There are no real happy endings in this book. There are noble, even happy, moments. Verghese is not afraid to say that people with AIDS (like anyone else) are often not heroic. Some of them are selfish. Some of them smell awful. But some of them use their illness to find appreciation of life and to cross social boundaries and befriend people they never thought they'd like.

I've always loved the writing of doctor/poet/author William Carlos Williams, who vividly captured the beauty and despair he found in the poor people he served in Paterson, New Jersey. Verghese writes more personally, less poetically than Williams. Reading his book, though, I think of the greeting that many a yoga student uses: "Namaste." ("I bow to the divine in you.") Verghese writes of the divine he sees in the angry, the sick, the old, and the young. He helps you to see it, too.

This is one of the best books I've read from a contemporary author. Verghese writes elegantly and with searing honesty about the AIDS patients he encountered as a young immigrant in small town America. So much has been written about his wonderful writing style and his compassion and humanity as a doctor...and I agree with all of that. I was especially interested in how he describes the gay experience as being analagous to the foreign immigrant experience in America. Both groups gain sustenance from their communities; both groups long for acceptance from the mainstream. It's interesting that the author's desire for assimilation is greater than his need to identify with the local Indian community. This book succeeds on every level. You gain insights into the life of the gay community, Indian immigrants, the medical community, and most of all the emotional and mental state of the man who describes it all. Thank you Doctor Verghese for this great book!

A lot of people, if one reads the previous reviews, see this as a novel of male friendship and bonding. I do not see it that way at all. Rather, I see it as a novel about men who are congenital loners trying to break out and find a meaningful relationship--unfortunately without success. That failure seriously undermines the premise of the novel.

Dr. Verghese, the author and narrator (although cited as fiction the book obviously is heavily autobiographical) and a fourth-year medical student named David Smith, encounter one another while working at the local teaching hospital in El Paso, Texas. Both are in the midst of breakups in their marital/significant other relationships and desperate for some sort of trusting, stable emotional bond. When they discover a mutual love of tennis-David has had limited semi-pro experience, Verghese has been enamored with the game all his life as an escape mechanism from his childhood loneliness-the basis is found for the beginning of the development of a relationship.

Both bring substantial emotional baggage to the relationship. It develops that David is a "recovered" drug addict. Verghese, stigmatized by his minority status and unable to relate to anyone except through very limiting roles (patient, neighbor, boss) is divorcing and managing it very badly. That the relationship seems to work at all is due to the role reversal it requires-David, the student and receiver of medical knowledge becomes the teacher of tennis wisdom and Verghese the receiver of same.

This is a deep, complex & ambitious book that fails. It fails because the central story, the relationship between David and Verghese never really exists-they never truly bond on an emotional level at any point. By the end we are supposed to be moved by the somehow deeply moving effect David has had on everyone in sight-Verghese, David's women, the other hospital folks, the local addict community and, presumably, the reader. Yet the man never really, at any point, truly touches anyone in the book at any sort of human level.

There are worthwhile elements to the book. One does get a genuine feel for what teaching hospital life is like. Also, one gets a feel for what life in El Paso, Texas, a very unusual community I like a lot, it like. Verghese's love for tennis is genuine and his prose about the sport is almost poetic. There are little historical snippets-mini biographical pieces, really-about the lives and quirks of some of tennis' great players that are interesting and informative. And, finally, Verghese is a gifted writer with an engaging and riveting writing voice.

In the end, I was really disappointed, though I was glad I read the book. But, the failure to deliver a convincing central story left this as much less of a book than it could have been.

"The Tennis Partner" focuses on the author's friendship with a fellow doctor who had once been a tennis pro and also a cocaine addict. But the book also weaves together other aspects of the author's life during a five-year period: his profession (internal medicine), his passion for tennis, the breakup of his marriage, and his efforts to create a home for himself as a newly single man. I liked the way in which these themes were dealt with in short chapters, some of which were single-topic (such as a tennis lesson with Pancho Segura), and others of which brought together several threads of the author's life. The shifts from medicine, to tennis, to marriage, and so forth, were smoothly accomplished and kept me engaged and interested. I also liked that the book was informative, especially about drug addiction, diagnosis of diseases, and the subtleties of tennis.

The author may strike some readers as a bit of a showoff where his medical skills and tennis are concerned, but I see his descriptions of these skills as realistic self-assessments: he's good at what he does. My only complaint is that Verghese (the author) seems humorless and not especially likable. But I guess I should cut him some slack here, considering that the book covers a dark period of his life. In reading his "New Yorker" pieces, Verghese has not struck me this way. I recommend this book.

Abraham Verghese is a physician, a deeply inquisitive student of human nature, and a dark, poetic writer. This book reminds me of another of my favorites, Norman Maclean's "A River Runs Through It," with tennis instead of fishing.

In the years that have elapsed since "My Own Country," Verghese's marriage has collapsed, and he has moved to a teaching hospital in Texas. One of his students is a young man named David Smith, who had briefly played pro tennis before beginning medical school. Verghese, an avid tennis player, hesitantly asks if they might play together.

Smith, like the younger brother in "A River Runs Through It," is charming, lovable, smart, and supremely gifted in his chosen sport; on the tennis court, he seems to be transformed into a different, and better, person. But his gifts aren't enough to save his life; he's an intravenous drug abuser, in and out of recovery and rehab. When the two men play tennis together, their support for each other, and their anger and frustrations, are all played out on the tennis court.

As in "My Own Country," Verghese reveals his fascination with people from all walks of life. His emotional inquisitiveness leads him to take risks, as when he accepts a junkie's offer of a tour of "his" world. Yet for all his curiosity and his desire to learn to see the world through the eyes of others, Verghese was unable to save his friend, and he was even unable to save his own marriage. Sadly, he wonders if his marriage might have survived if he had invested himself in it as deeply as he invested himself in the minutiae of tennis.