Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

I wasn’t going to read the next book for my book club but something made me go to the used bookstore and try to find a copy of Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone and when I found it – it was on. I had under a week to finish a 658 page paperback novel and after reading the first chapter, I knew I could do it.

To say that I liked this book is an understatement. I loved everything about it, especially the family saga in the unconventional setting of war torn Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It all starts with a lovely Hindu girl named Sister Mary Joseph Praise, that’s right, she’s a Catholic nun. And on top of that, she’s living in Africa and she’s pregnant – with twins.

The story is told from the perspective of Marion Stone, one of the twins. “Born in Africa, living in exile in America, then returning at last to Africa…proof that geography is destiny.” Marion and his brother Shiva are raised by the hospital where they were born but more specifically by Hema and Ghosh, doctors who worked with Sister Mary. Spoiler Alert: Sister Mary doesn’t survive the childbirth and the twins are left orphans from the first chapter of this book. But what about the father, you may ask? That’s too good to give out.

“I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners, specialists in this art.” From the Hippocratic Oath all physicians must swear to when entering into the field of practicing medicine. There is another oath or 11^th commandment that the doctors in this novel learn the hard way: “Thou shall not operate on the day of a patient’s death.” The art of medicine is one I doubt I could ever perform. The decisions needed to be made in order to save a person’s life or end it are some of the most difficult decisions the characters of Cutting for Stone must make. But what’s even more difficult for them are the complicated relationships they have when they are alive and healthy.

Not only are the dramas of these characters enthralling but so too is their landscape. Ethiopia plays an important part in this novel. The political conflicts that arise between Eritrea and Ethiopia are paralleled in the personal dramas of its people. How can people seem so different from each other when they are all so fundamentally alike? How can people hate each other so much when they forgot what they were fighting for to begin with? The endings in love and war are always unforgiving and unfair but apparently that’s the way it goes.

In the end, all things come full circle. We may lose things, places, each other but we can never escape our destiny. What that destiny is for Marion only he can figure out, but it’s deeply rooted in the soil of Africa.