Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Throwback Thursday or Past Reads

Before I started this blog, I kept notebooks of the books I’d read.  I began years ago in order record my thoughts as a book group member and then later just so I wouldn’t purchase or (yikes) re-read the same books.  Don’t smirk, you’ve done it too!  I thought I would share some of my top good reads on random Thursdays.

Today it’s Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese.

From the publicity blurb:

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.
 
Moving from Addis Ababa to New York City and back again, Cutting for Stone is an unforgettable story of love and betrayal, medicine and ordinary miracles–and two brothers whose fates are forever intertwined.

Most of my reader friends disliked this novel, could not get into it, or found it dull and overwritten.  As a member of the minority I was swept away into this brilliant and powerful saga.

Yes, it’s a Saga with a capital S – an epic tale that follows twisty, messy lives   The tale takes the orphan twins from their birth in a medical clinic–through the frightening coups in Ethiopia — to New York City where they become successful surgeons in their own rights.

The twins come of age at the Ethiopian medical clinic where they were abandoned at birth and they suffer the consequences of their youthful carelessness and their unreliable makeshift family. The twins’ (twin’s?) lives are complicated yet enriched by these fascinating and crooked characters — a misguided, often drunk, but good-hearted doctor, a female OB who is overly sentimental, yet cruel and unforgiving not to mention the various thugs and manipulators who draw the boys in and out of trouble

The author is a surgeon and his professional insight is throughout the book.  The medical scenes are extremely graphic and eyeopening – there are plenty of mishaps, botched surgeries and the genital mutilation scenes are not for the queasy.  But Mr. Verghese also did some fine research.  The history and culture of Ethiopia is one of the highlights of the story — both fascinating and horrifying.   The author writes with both beauty and harshness and I guarantee you will stop in the middle of reading to marvel at his remarkable prose.

Yes, this book is sometimes slow going and there are many side tracks. Other readers found the detail overwritten – whereas, I found that the many-layered descriptions enriched the remarkable story.

You’re on notice – Cutting for Stone is messy, appalling and sometimes confusing.  This is not a light novel and, at 670 pages, this is a demanding read.  Nonetheless, I found it, like life itself, full of love and cruelty — joy and sadness.   A Saga with a capital S.