Cutting for Stone : Abraham Verghese

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I am a fan of books set in Africa. I love them. I devour them. So, buying Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese was a no-brainer for me, despite the ridiculous price tag of almost $15 for it. Seriously, publishers should start producing "budget books" that come without the frills of whatever it is that make these books so expensive. Maybe Air Asia might help them?

Cutting for Stone has become an instant classic in the way that people crave for instant karma. The story has everything. A love story between a nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, and a surgeon, Thomas Stone, in Ethiopia where they care for the heaving sick that throng through the doors of Missing Hospital. Their rather inexplicable union results in the birth of twins, Shiva and Marion Stone. But their traumatic entry into this world is marred by Sister Mary Joseph's death, and Thomas Stone's mad desertion. The gynecologist at Missing, Hema, adopts the orphaned twins along with later-to-be husband Ghosh, also a doctor at Missing. What follows is a narrative as told by Marion - deftly interspersed in between are slices of Ethiopia's equally mad history. His childhood, his long, fatal attraction for Genet, the bond he shares with his twin, Shiva - all this and more are packed in a frenetic middle and beginning. The action never flags except towards the beginning of the end when the author inexplicably rambles on quite a bit about Marion in America.

Abraham Verghese is a marvelously readable author, this being his first novel, although he has written two non-fiction books before this. This book has received wonderful reviews, but I think I won't be offering that here. There is no doubt that we have a marvelous story here - but every story requires of the reader that 'willing suspension of disbelief.' Cutting for Stone did not lead me to that. I was mostly incredulous as I read through the beginning - Verghese also has a strange way of describing in long paragraphs a single action that took place in a second. That takes away the whole startling immediacy of the action. Long passages are devoted to feats of surgical mastery that frankly, no reader apart from a medical student can really understand. The characters never had a voice except through Marion, and although he does an admirable job as a narrator, Abraham never gives me the changing inflections of voice that are required as one passes from a child's eye to an adult. Marion at 12 talks much the same as he does at 30. There is too much maturity burdened on the child and that I found hard to believe.

And there's the end! It's one of the oldest tricks in Bollywood or Hollywood or any Moviewood you can think of. Think twins and we are left with this! I won't spoil it for you, but come on, why do writers have this magical obsession with twins that they think can only be mystically resolved? And pray, why this tome that stretches to over 500 pages when it could have easily been snipped by a few 100s? I think the New York Times reviewer could not have said it better. "This is a first novel that reveals the author’s willingness to show the souls, as well as the bodies, of his characters. In Verghese’s second profession, a great surgeon is called an editor. Here’s hoping that in the future the author finds stronger medicine in that line." True. How true.

Verdict : Readable but I wasn't impressed or touched or moved or whatever it is that made this book such a bestseller. 


Rating: 3/5