Book Review - Yesterday I was a Doctor

Title : I want to tell a story : Yesterday, I was a Doctor

Author / Publisher : Mohd Nazir Mohd Nazori
Pages : 155
Price : RM10.00
ISBN : 978-967-12789-0-1

I bought the book at his parents' house on 20th Oct 2014. I started reading it at 6.15 p.m. that day and I finished at 2.15 a.m. the next day.

About the author 

He is my cousin's eldest son. I heard about his ordeals but never really know what happened until I read this book. I think I was also in the time period mentioned in the book when I went to the state where his then workplace is situated because my wife was posted there. I stayed at his in-laws house for some days during which I was in touch with him for quite some time. I have heard about his problem from my mother but I never really asked him about it because I was engrossed in searching for my wife's accommodation. Luckily, I was not mentioned in the book as an antagonist, much to my relief. 

For me, he is quite a nice and soft-spoken guy. He really respects the elders, based on what I perceive whenever we meet, especially towards his aunt (my mother). I never really saw this coming as I have always regarded him as a good achiever, being the eldest son of an architect and a lecturer. 

About the book

It is written in the story-telling style, using first person narrative. The foreword was written on my birthday, which really pleases me a lot. Nobody's name is mentioned in the book, which actually preserves the animosity of those involved. The cover is artful enough and it complements the title. It has ten chapters, all of which are unevenly written in terms of page allocations. It targets mainly those who experience the same problem - depression - with the hope that it will help them to deal with the problem properly. 

Personal comments

As I am teaching English, I could not help noticing the grammatical mistakes. I could find at least three reading the Acknowledgement alone, not to mention the whole book. However, I understand that this is a personally published book, which is surely not including some professional proofreading, so I will neglect the errors and focus on the content. His vocabulary is wide though, arguably wider than mine, and it is understandable considering that he was in the United Kingdom during childhood and continued his study there after the SPM. 

In terms of the physical side of the book, there are some flaws. The cover, in my humble opinion, should have the title written on its spine, which will be of some help when the book is stored on a bookshelf. Furthermore, there is no content page, so I had to browse the book page by page to count the number of chapters. On the other hand, the book should have a page where the author explains all the jargon used in the book, as I struggled to understand the meaning of MO, HO, CBT or PSY, just to name a few. To be fair, the author tried to explain some of them using side notes.

The content of the book is basically easy. It portrays the author's life story starting from the time when he remembers it until the ultimate defining moment of his resignation. I really learned something new about this particular cousin of mine, and would relish the chance to meet him again after becoming an author. I agree that the topic of depression should be discussed more deeply and the the sufferer should be treated more fairly before any judgment could be made.

I salute his decision of not mentioning any names in the book, but I personally think that his name should also be hidden under a pen name because nowadays we can trace anything based on the tiniest piece of information. In this particular case, somebody may dig up even the name of the hospital where the event took  place.    

Conclusion

I really enjoyed reading the book and would not stop short in recommending this to everybody, especially those main target readers. To know more about the book, click here to visit the page dedicated for it.