RollnSmoke Reviews: Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (Knopf, 2009)

This absorbing first novel by a brilliant Stanford medical professor is a coming-of-age story about twin brothers who grow up in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia and is told in retrospect from the point of view of the elder brother and main character, Marion Stone. When the boys’ Indian mother dies in childbirth and their British father flees, the children are raised by two very loving doctors at the local Missing Hospital, among a tightly–knit hospital community. The novel is quick-reading, rooted in exotic landscapes and utilizes modern Ethiopian politics and culture as vital background. Verghese’s writing is clear and profound in its singular and edifying approach to covering wide topics in (particularly surgical) medicine. But the soul of the book is the message that enduring family relationships can sustain the most divergent paths and can heal the deepest rifts (9.5/10).