Fic­tion

The Office of Desire

Martha Moody
  • Review
By – March 5, 2012

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.

Tami Kamin-Mey­er is a licensed attor­ney who would rather write than fight. Her byline has appeared in a vari­ety of pub­li­ca­tions, includ­ing Bet­ter Homes and Gar­dens, The Rotar­i­an, Ohio Super Lawyers, Ohio Lawyers Week­ly, Ohio Mag­a­zine, Cleve­land Jew­ish News, the Jew­ish Tele­graph­ic Agency, and www​.chabad​.edu. She is also an award-win­ning Hebrew school educator.

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