Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

• Discussion leader: Edna Ritzenberg
• Monday, November 15, 2 p.m.  (please note time change)

Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a novice, pious nun leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor, Thomas Stone. They meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies giving birth to twin boys: Shiva and Marion.

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Reviews from the NoveList Plus database:

Publishers Weekly:

 

/* Starred Review */ Lauded for his sensitive memoir (My Own Country ) about his time as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in the ’80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brother’s long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Verghese’s weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel. (Feb.) --Staff (Reviewed October 27, 2008) (Publishers Weekly, vol 255, issue 43, p32)

 

 

Library Journal:

Focusing on the world of medicine, this epic first novel by well-known doctor/author Verghese (My Own Country ) follows a man on a mythic quest to find his father. It begins with the dramatic birth of twins slightly joined at the skull, their father serving as surgeon and their mother dying on the table. The horrorstruck father vanishes, and the now separated boys are raised by two Indian doctors living on the grounds of a mission hospital in early 1950s Ethiopia. The boys both gravitate toward medical practice, with Marion the more studious one and Shiva a moody genius and loner. Also living on the hospital grounds is Genet, daughter of one of the maids, who grows up to be a beautiful and mysterious young woman and a source of ruinous competition between the brothers. After Marion is forced to flee the country for political reasons, he begins his medical residency at a poor hospital in New York City, and the past catches up with him. The medical background is fascinating as the author delves into fairly technical areas of human anatomy and surgical procedure. This novel succeeds on many levels and is recommended for all collections. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/08.]—Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. at Oneonta --Jim Coan (Reviewed January 15, 2009) (Library Journal, vol 134, issue 1, p85)

 

 

Kirkus:

There's a mystery, a coming-of-age, abundant melodrama and even more abundant medical lore in this idiosyncratic first novel from a doctor best known for the memoir My Own Country (1994).The nun is struggling to give birth in the hospital. The surgeon (is he also the father?) dithers. The late-arriving OB-GYN takes charge, losing the mother but saving her babies, identical twins. We are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1954. The Indian nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, was a trained nurse who had met the British surgeon Thomas Stone on a sea voyage ministering to passengers dying of typhus. She then served as his assistant for seven years. The emotionally repressed Stone never declared his love for her; had they really done the deed? After the delivery, Stone rejects the babies and leaves Ethiopia. This is good news for Hema (Dr. Hemalatha, the Indian gynecologist), who becomes their surrogate mother and names them Shiva and Marion. When Shiva stops breathing, Dr. Ghosh (another Indian) diagnoses his apnea; again, a medical emergency throws two characters together. Ghosh and Hema marry and make a happy family of four. Marion eventually emerges as narrator. "Where but in medicine," he asks, "might our conjoined, matricidal, patrifugal, twisted fate be explained?" The question is key, revealing Verghese's intent: a family saga in the context of medicine. The ambition is laudable, but too often accounts of operations—a bowel obstruction here, a vasectomy there—overwhelm the narrative. Characterization suffers. The boys' Ethiopian identity goes unexplored. Shiva is an enigma, though it's no surprise he'll have a medical career, like his brother, though far less orthodox. They become estranged over a girl, and eventually Marion leaves for America and an internship in the Bronx (the final, most suspenseful section). Once again a medical emergency defines the characters, though they are not large enough to fill the positively operatic roles Verghese has ordained for them.A bold but flawed debut novel. (Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2008)

• Interview with Abraham Verghese (Random House.com) 

•  Cutting for Stone at Barnes and Noble.com

• Erica  Wagner's NY Times Book Review, 2/6/09