Friday, February 3, 2012

Opening Sentence of the Day: Green Oranges


" . . .and the Golden Rule, Dr. Joy?"
-- Green Oranges on Lion Mountain by Emily Joy (ellipses in original).  This is a British doctor's memoir about working for two years in Sierra Leone.

Publisher's Description:

When your Dad can crash his airplane into two water buffalo, life is unlikely to go according to plan. Even so, Emily Joy puts on her rose-tinted specs, leaves behind her comfortable life as a doctor in York and heads off for two years to a remote hospital in Sierra Leone. There she finds the oranges are green, the bananas are black and her patients are, well, really ill. There's no water, no electricity, no oxygen, no amputation saw—and Dr. Em is no surgeon. And there's no chocolate to treat her nasty case of unrequited love. Then the rebels invade! Dr. Em's problems are tiny compared to those faced by the people of Sierra Leone on a daily basis. If they can remain so optimistic, what's Em's excuse? Our green doctor is a bit of a yellow-belly, often red-faced, trying to fight the blues. But green oranges give sweet orange juice. Never judge a fruit by its color.




A Few More Pages hosts Book Beginnings every Friday.  The event is open for the entire week.

4 comments :

  1. What a good title for the book. It makes you think about what is real and what is not.

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  2. I love that last line of the publisher's blurb. So very colorful!

    Here's my Friday: http://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/2012/02/friday-memes.html

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  3. The title of the book is intriguing in itself but the description really caught my attention. This sounds like a great read.

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  4. I'm struck by the title, "Green Oranges." I am always amazed with the work doctors do in third world countries.

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