Say No to Death

Say No to Death (1951) is a novel by Australian writer Dymphna Cusack.[1]

Say No to Death
AuthorDymphna Cusack
CountryAustralia
LanguageEnglish
GenreFiction
PublisherHeinemann
Publication date
1951
Media typePrint
Pages324pp
Preceded byCome in Spinner 
Followed bySouthern Steel 

Story outline

Set in Sydney following the war, the novel follows the medical journey of Jan, a young woman suffering from tuberculosis, and her struggles to gain any help from a Government health service struggling for funds.

Critical reception

A reviewer in The Age was impressed by the novel: "'A novel built entirely around a social injustice is a rarity, but with competence and courage Dymphna Cusack, in Say No to Death, has presented the subject of the tuberculosis patient and, in a story of heroism, pathos and great sympathy, put the case for the sick civilian at the mercy of a Government — a Government and a people — who respond to the needs of the scourge of war so much more readily than to the scourge of illness...This is a book well worth reading, as much for the story as for the message it carries."[2]

A reviewer in The Mercury had a similar view: "In painting her characters all typically Australian - Miss Cusack has reached unusual literary heights. She shows a deep knowledge of the vagaries of human nature. The unexpected, courageous ending gives the final touch to a novel which must rank high in Australian literature."[3]

gollark: You can just hand out what some random people think is absolutely *needed* first, then stick the rest of everything up for public use, but that won't work either! Someone has to decide on the "needed", so you get into a planned-economy sort of situation, and otherwise... what happens when, say, the community kale farm decides they want all the remaining fertilizer, even when people don't want *that* much kale?
gollark: Planned economies, or effectively-planned-by-lots-of-voting economies, will have to implement this themselves by having everyone somehow decide where all the hundred million things need to go - and that's not even factoring in the different ways to make each thing, or the issues of logistics.
gollark: Market systems can make this work pretty well - you can sell things and use them to buy other things, and ultimately it's driven by what consumers are interested in buying.
gollark: Consider: in our modern economy, there are probably around (order of magnitude) a hundred million different sorts of thing people or organizations might need.
gollark: So you have to *vote* on who gets everything?

See also

References
  1. Austlit - Say No to Death by Dymphna Cusack
  2. "Novels with Intent", The Age, 9 February 1952, p8
  3. "An Australian Mimi" by Scribe, The Mercury, 5 January 1952, p15
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