Sawbones Memorial by Sinclair Ross.

The action of Sawbones Memorial occurs in the patients’ lounge of the new Hunter Memorial Hospital; the occasion is Upward’s celebration of Dr. (Doc) Hunter’s retirement after forty-five years of service and the anniversary of his first arrival in the town. Ross’s title deliberately suggests the hospital as tangible testament, the illegitimate son who will succeed Doc, and the reminiscences of characters who recall salient events in the town’s and Doc’s lives. The novel has no conventional linear plot line; it is structured by dialogue, public announcements or speeches, and silent soliloquies, with characters’ repeated preoccupations making them otherwise identifiable. It is their recital or comparison of episodes in Doc’s career, their gossip, as well as their comments on present conditions which intermittently link the story’s episodes—each of which functions as a miniature play for voices. Doc’s clarification and explanations to various interlocutors further fill out the narrative, for Sawbones Memorial is an accumulating revelation of the central character, of his role in the lives of some townspeople, and of psychological disclosure, rather than a strictly chronological plot.