The current lackadaisical attitude toward pandemics is bad enough, but this book is a reminder (not that long ago, the Reagan AIDS years) of what total indifference looks like, as long as the disease is seen as targeting a marginalized community. I found the book to be a semi-slog, I mean, it's a chronicle of suffering, but nothing compared to the author who actually endured it during five years of treating AIDS patients in a non-supportive (with occasional surprising exceptions) environment, in addition to the stresses it added to his home life and his identity as an outsider (Indian descent, born and raised in Africa, practicing in the rural south). It's just a slice of his life (at the end I wondered where his life journey went on from there), but autobiographical and imbued with outrage and melancholy.