The Citadel . Review on Citadel, The - A J Cronin

This book is about a young, idealistic newly-qualified doctor called Andrew Manson who is posted in an inhospitable mining town in Wales. However he is soon disappointed with the insularity of all those who surround him and consult him, and with the formidable bureaucracy that he is up against.

Realizing his impotence, he works on building his professional credentials and changes jobs several times, but gains little satisfaction in his career. He also acquires a reputation for unorthodoxy and makes several friends and enemies.

Somewhere along the line he becomes mercenary, tired of his seemingly futile struggles and anxious to prove his worth to his acquaintances. So begins his downward spiral… He enters the fashionable London of upwardly mobile socialites. He sets up a lucrative practice by treating matrons who have very little wrong with them medically. The desire to make money grips him to such an alarming extent that he succumbs to all the tricks of the quacks he once despised, such as prescribing unnecessary and useless patent medicines. He seems to have lost all his scruples, much to the horror of his wife and friends.

When Manson receives a rude shock in the operating theatre, is it too late for him to redeem himself? Can he turn his back on the monetary aspect and go back to what he once was? These questions must be rhetorical, as I have already given away enough of the plot.

This book is slightly predictable, but nonetheless makes good reading. Manson’s moral transformations are a bit abrupt, and the dialogues seem stilted in places. One wonders how a doctor can swerve so far from his principles, but probably the provocation was great.

'The Citadel' is an interesting read, as it gives a fascinating insight into the world of medicine in the 1920s.The concluding chapter, especially Manson’s speech somewhere towards the end are brilliant.