加拿大籍小说家阿瑟·黑利(Arthur Halley)自1979年发表《超载》(Overload)一书以来,已经好久没听说了,最近才知道他好一阵子在害心脏病,动过大手术,去岁康复后,在夫人怂恿下又写了一部新作,暂译《烈药》(Strong Medicine)。此书以当代(写到1985年)美国制药界为背景,通过一位聪慧、干练、勤奋、正直的年轻女企业家(佐以其忠诚的丈夫)半生世途中的悲欢起伏,恣意刻绘了西方大企业的高效多营而不免伤德,知识人员的蓬勃天才、峥嵘道义、悲沉心态之间的纠葛。黑氏对八十年代的美国企业、社会、人情如数家珍,纤毫可致,益以跌宕多姿的生活趣味,丝丝入扣的心理描写,言白意深的行文对话,似乎使本书的思想性、艺术性、可读性更胜于黑氏前作《大饭店》, It has been a long time since Arthur Halley, a Canadian novelist who published Overload in 1979, has not heard of it and recently learned that he had been hurt by heart disease and major surgery After he recovered to the age of last year, he wrote a new book at the instigation of his wife, temporarily translating “Strong Medicine.” Based on the contemporary (1985) American pharmaceutical industry, this book is painstakingly crafted by an intelligent, capable, industrious and upright young woman entrepreneur (with her loyal husband) half a lifetime The high-efficiency multi-battalion of Western large-scale enterprises can not help but shameful, thriving genius of intellectuals, towering moral, sad mentality entangled. Herbalism seems to make the book’s ideological, artistic, social and humanistic connotations of American business, social, and affection from the 1980s to the slightest degree. Readability is better than before Black’s “Grand Hotel”