The Waiting Room

Compelling, moving and memorable. Graeme Simsion.

The Waiting Room captures the sights, sounds, accents and animosities of a country overflowing with stories.

Dina is a family doctor living in the melting-pot city of Haifa, Israel. Born in Australia in a Jewish enclave of Melbourne to Holocaust survivors, Dina left behind a childhood marred by misery and the tragedies of the past to build a new life for herself in the Promised Land.

After starting a family of her own, she finds her life falling apart beneath the demands of her eccentric patients, a marriage starting to fray, the ever-present threat of terrorist attack and the ghost of her mother, haunting her with memories that Dina would prefer to leave on the other side of the world.

Leah Kaminsky plumbs the depths of her characters' memories, both the sweet and the heart-wrenching, reaching back in a single climactic day through six decades and across three continents to uncover a truth that could save Dina's sanity – and her life.

About the Author

Leah Kaminsky, an award-winning physician and writer, is Poetry and Fiction Editor at the Medical Journal of Australia. The Waiting Room is her debut novel. It was shortlisted in the Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Writing Competition. She conceived and edited Writer MD, a collection of prominent physician-writers, which starred on Booklist and is co-author of Cracking the Code, with the Damiani family. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Read Caroline Baum's Review:

Leah Kaminsky knows the stress of a doctor’s life: she is one.

This is why her debut novel about a pregnant Israeli GP has such an authentic flavour. We're right there with her as she rushes about her duties, haunted by her persistently present but dead mother and living on high alert, ever vigilant for the next terrorist attack.

The Waiting Room convincingly conveys all the intensity of Israeli everyday life.