Book 13 of 52: Cutting for Stone

I've been wanting to read this for over a year and when I found out it was a book club selection I decided to wait until closer to the time when we'd be talking about it at our April book club meeting. I didn't realize that it would take me until April to actually finish it.

I thought I'd be writing this entry a couple of weeks ago, but life has a way of taking it's own twists and turns. I happen to pick a 600-page book to read just as things with work and the kids got really busy. I'm back to reading now and re-focussed on finding time for myself and hopefully catching up on my weekly entries. In fact, after I finished this book, I read another one in only two days (another blog entry to follow shortly on that one as well!).

This book started off a little slowly and for some reason, whether it be sleep deprivation thanks to a teething 15 month old or the language in the novel, it was a slower read for me than normal. It might have been that the author loved details...and I loved them too. It took me to the unknown worlds of Indian, Ethiopia and inner-city New York. It was a fascinating look into medicine and its practitioners, a love story, as well as a political drama. The narrator is Marion Stone, a 50 yr-old surgeon, who recounts his life from inception and of his twin brother, Shiva, and the lives of the people that cared for them. They were born conjoined at the head (successfully separated), sons of an Indian nun/nurse living in Ethiopia. Their father is an extraordinarily talented surgeon, Thomas Stone, who had worked with Sister Mary Praise (their mother) for seven years. The setting of most of the book is Abba Adaba, Ethiopia, at the fictional Mission Hospital (pronounced "Missing" by many Ethiopians).

If I say too much about this book, I'll have to throw in a lot of spoilers, and suspense has its delicious rewards. So I won't. Suffice it to say, your patience with the story will be worth it. It was truly a wonderful read, and I think it could have only been even better if I had had more free time to get through it in a few sittings, rather than spread it across weeks.