Scenes from the rich, contentious life of a dying Jewish South African country doctor flash before his expatriate daughter's eyes in Landsman's frustrating second novel (after The Devil's Chimney
). A skinny boy with a hot-tempered mother and a good-hearted father, Harry Klein grew up in pre-WWII Germany, where he married a woman from a socially superior Jewish family during medical school and later endured the wartime death of his father from influenza. After his emigration to South Africa, patients of all races revere him as “Doctor God,” but he clashes with his artist daughter (who narrates, maddeningly, in the second person) and can't shake his life-long jealousy of his younger brother, a flashy, respected cardiologist. This novel offers a few insights on death, the frailty of the human body and the ties between parent and child, but the overly lyrical prose tries too hard, and the second-person narration does the mostly opaque narrative few favors. (Nov.)
