Cutting For Stone

I recently finished reading Abraham Verghese's novel, Cutting For Stone. I got bogged down at the beginning. I mean, good grief, 100 pages from start to finish of an emergency c-section?!?! But I'm not a novelist, nor am I an editor, and of course, the author was doing a great job of developing the characters. AND I'm an impatient person. So I endured. And eventually the c-section happened.

Cutting for stone was a surgical technique used in the middle ages for extracting the "Stone of Madness." Fascinating...

I even entertained the family during one dinner table conversation as I reported on the beginnings of the book. How many stories have you read where the mother of twins is a nun? and there's a finger in a jar on her dresser? THAT's why I plugged along. I do so enjoy stories with a medical drama involved.

Set in Ethiopia, the home country of the author, Cutting For Stone revolves around two young boys who grow up adopted by the folks who run a missions hospital. So these boys are constantly surrounded by health issues. And of course they run into the typical growing up stuff. But they are not Ethiopian. Their father is British and nowhere to be found. Their mother was Indian and died in childbirth. They grow up in the midst of Haile Selassie and military coups. Fascinating...

Although the book is fiction, I can't help but feel that much of Verghese's life is mixed in. Verghese is Indian, raised in Ethiopia, finished medical school in the United States, and is now living in California. Fascinating...

yep, I enjoyed it.