“The old boys’ network”: Medical space, gendered memory, and prejudices in Sidney Sheldon’s Nothing Last Forever

Abstract

Abstract Sidney Sheldon’s Nothing Last Forever unfolds a mosaic of experiences encountered by medical professionals that normatively remains unheard in the cycle of diagnosing, treating, and caring for patients. The novel brings to light the human within the doctor that is consciously kept at bay to cope with professional demands. With the rise of narrative medicine, scholars such as Rita Charon have emphasized the importance of narratology to understand patients’ crises. However, narrative medicine has largely ignored the phenomenological crises and anxieties of medical professionals. Thus, the paper investigates how on the one hand the female agencies problematize the medical space, and on the other, how the agency embodied by the female doctor is constantly threatened and demeaned by the male gaze that primarily categorizes women as sexual objects and caregivers. This paper primarily inquires how the politics of gendered memory is dramatized and contested in Sidney Sheldon’s medical crime thriller Nothing Last Forever.