Magnificent Obsession is one of Lloyd C. Douglas’s string of forgettable novels about the psychological benefits of practicing New Testament principles.
If you read White Banners or Green Light, you’ll find this novel familiar. Only the names have been changed to protect the author’s royalties.
In this novel, a neurosurgeon learns that if he does good deeds in secret, he is rewarded financially. He records his philanthropic experiences of not letting his right hand know what his left hand is doing (very tough for a surgeon) in secret code in a diary.
After Hudson’s death, the wealthy young n’er-do-well who deciphers the code is inspired to replace Hudson. In two pages, Bobby Merrick goes from ready-to-flunk med school to head of the Hudson Clinic.
Bobby not only becomes as good a doctor as his hero, he saves the doctor’s beloved daughter from a life of dissipation. He also wins the hero’s widow.
Douglas mingles romance and religion into a soggy pulp. Fortunately, the plot is so contrived and the characters so predictable that you’ll forget the book within an hour of finishing reading it.
Magnificent Obsession Lloyd C. Douglas Peoples Book Club, 1929 330 pages 1932 Bestseller #8 My Grade: C-Photo credit: “Old Medical Books” uploaded by aerogurl http://www.sxc.hu/photo/122275
