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Download Cutting for Stone Online
by Abraham Verghese
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A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel—an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home. Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him. An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
Reviews
Two dear friends who are lifelong readers highly recommended this novel. I did care a lot about all the characters from Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a Malayali, who saves a seasick young British surgeon, Thomas Stone. They wind up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in a hospital meant to be "Mission" but heard and recorded as "Missing." There are a full cast of characters here, including Dr. Abhi Ghosh, who has an unrequited love for Dr. K. Hemlatha...Hema, Matron, the Probationer, Almaz and Rosina, servants, Mebratu and Zemui, military men, and three main characters, Shiva and Marion, the conjoined twins born to Sister and Thomas Stone, and Genet, daughter of Rosina. Of course, there are a lot of minor characters, too. With all these stories to tell Verghese does a masterful job. Medical activities at Missing, personal lives of the children, war activities and uprisings against Haile Selassie are woven together to create a page turner! I cared about all the characters and recommend the book.
Cutting for Stone is a touching story that follows the lives of Marion and Shiva, twins raised in Ethiopia. Marion and Shiva are born to an Indian nun and English Doctor who lose their mother at birth. They are raised by two Indian doctors working at a missionary hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I will not summarize the plot; suffice it to say that it is a beautiful story, beautifully told. It is a story of love, loss, betrayal, resentments, forgiveness and redemption. It is a story about parental love and parental estrangement, about sibling bond and sibling rivalry, about community, family and so much more. It is the story of wounds, some that surgery can fix and some that nothing can fix; that will fester the rest of our lives unless we resolve to heal them ourselves. Broken limbs are more easily fixed than broken hearts! Of late, several doctors have been writing fiction – Sanjay Gupta, Khaled Hosseini, Atul Gawande and the author of this book Abraham Verghese. As you would expect, the story is full of medical details. Readers may find the medical details tedious. Not being a doctor, these details served to remind me of the complications of the human body and feel a sense of gratitude to doctors/surgeons who look after us when we are ill. This book has several characters who are doctors and they are all dedicated, committed and compassionate. Some readers may find the end over-dramatized but I found the end of the story satisfying. Ethiopia’s political landscape forms the backdrop for the story as the story moves between India, Ethiopia and America. The author’s prose is remarkable. The book is filled with wonderful characters you feel you know as members of your family. The reader will remember the characters in the book long after the book has been read. The book is full of kindness, compassion, love and wisdom. This is not a page turning cliff hanger kind of novel, it is a thoughtful, literary novel that needs to be read slowly and savoured. I highly recommend the book.
Wow! There are so many things I want to say about this book but, to understand why I loved it so much, I think
it's important to say a bit about myself and why it's such a surprise to me that I loved this book so much. This is not the type of book I would normally enjoy. I usually prefer a book with a lot of suspense and a moment of climax that makes my heart race. I love a book that catches me by the throat in the first few paragraphs, and keeps me on the edge of my seat until the last page. That was absolutely not this book. In fact, this book was a pretty good example of what I usually don't like. It was what my brother would call a "slow burn." It's a book that just tells a really great story and, when the action actually does start happening, it takes you by such complete surprise because you weren't expecting it. This book took me "forever" to read. I normally get through a book in 2 or 3 days. A particularly long book might take me a week. This book took me every bit of 3 weeks. But I couldn't just put it down and let it go. I just "had to" keep reading it. "Cutting for Stone" is a beautiful story about a set of mirror-image twins, conjoined at birth and surgically separated in the first few moments of life. Orphaned by their mother and abandoned by their father, it's the story of the love they found with their adoptive parents and extended "family" in Ethiopia. And beyond that, it's the story about the love of medicine. A major aspect of this book deals with medical procedures and surgeries. Normally I might skim through these sections as they usually not only don't interest me, and the terminology is usually over my head. Not so with this book. Abraham Verghese writes in a manner that even the least educated layman could understand and envision in his head. Surprisingly I found the descriptions of medical procedures to be absolutely fascinating. This is probably the best book I've read this year, and it's one that I would strongly recommend to anyone who enjoys a good read. Yes, it might take longer to read than the latest action thriller, but it's one of those books that will stay with the reader for years to come.
Click Here to Download the Book
by Abraham Verghese
Click Here to Download the Book
A sweeping, emotionally riveting first novel—an enthralling family saga of Africa and America, doctors and patients, exile and home. Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics—their passion for the same woman—that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him—nearly destroying him—Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him. An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others.
Reviews
Two dear friends who are lifelong readers highly recommended this novel. I did care a lot about all the characters from Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a Malayali, who saves a seasick young British surgeon, Thomas Stone. They wind up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in a hospital meant to be "Mission" but heard and recorded as "Missing." There are a full cast of characters here, including Dr. Abhi Ghosh, who has an unrequited love for Dr. K. Hemlatha...Hema, Matron, the Probationer, Almaz and Rosina, servants, Mebratu and Zemui, military men, and three main characters, Shiva and Marion, the conjoined twins born to Sister and Thomas Stone, and Genet, daughter of Rosina. Of course, there are a lot of minor characters, too. With all these stories to tell Verghese does a masterful job. Medical activities at Missing, personal lives of the children, war activities and uprisings against Haile Selassie are woven together to create a page turner! I cared about all the characters and recommend the book.
Cutting for Stone is a touching story that follows the lives of Marion and Shiva, twins raised in Ethiopia. Marion and Shiva are born to an Indian nun and English Doctor who lose their mother at birth. They are raised by two Indian doctors working at a missionary hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. I will not summarize the plot; suffice it to say that it is a beautiful story, beautifully told. It is a story of love, loss, betrayal, resentments, forgiveness and redemption. It is a story about parental love and parental estrangement, about sibling bond and sibling rivalry, about community, family and so much more. It is the story of wounds, some that surgery can fix and some that nothing can fix; that will fester the rest of our lives unless we resolve to heal them ourselves. Broken limbs are more easily fixed than broken hearts! Of late, several doctors have been writing fiction – Sanjay Gupta, Khaled Hosseini, Atul Gawande and the author of this book Abraham Verghese. As you would expect, the story is full of medical details. Readers may find the medical details tedious. Not being a doctor, these details served to remind me of the complications of the human body and feel a sense of gratitude to doctors/surgeons who look after us when we are ill. This book has several characters who are doctors and they are all dedicated, committed and compassionate. Some readers may find the end over-dramatized but I found the end of the story satisfying. Ethiopia’s political landscape forms the backdrop for the story as the story moves between India, Ethiopia and America. The author’s prose is remarkable. The book is filled with wonderful characters you feel you know as members of your family. The reader will remember the characters in the book long after the book has been read. The book is full of kindness, compassion, love and wisdom. This is not a page turning cliff hanger kind of novel, it is a thoughtful, literary novel that needs to be read slowly and savoured. I highly recommend the book.
Wow! There are so many things I want to say about this book but, to understand why I loved it so much, I think
it's important to say a bit about myself and why it's such a surprise to me that I loved this book so much. This is not the type of book I would normally enjoy. I usually prefer a book with a lot of suspense and a moment of climax that makes my heart race. I love a book that catches me by the throat in the first few paragraphs, and keeps me on the edge of my seat until the last page. That was absolutely not this book. In fact, this book was a pretty good example of what I usually don't like. It was what my brother would call a "slow burn." It's a book that just tells a really great story and, when the action actually does start happening, it takes you by such complete surprise because you weren't expecting it. This book took me "forever" to read. I normally get through a book in 2 or 3 days. A particularly long book might take me a week. This book took me every bit of 3 weeks. But I couldn't just put it down and let it go. I just "had to" keep reading it. "Cutting for Stone" is a beautiful story about a set of mirror-image twins, conjoined at birth and surgically separated in the first few moments of life. Orphaned by their mother and abandoned by their father, it's the story of the love they found with their adoptive parents and extended "family" in Ethiopia. And beyond that, it's the story about the love of medicine. A major aspect of this book deals with medical procedures and surgeries. Normally I might skim through these sections as they usually not only don't interest me, and the terminology is usually over my head. Not so with this book. Abraham Verghese writes in a manner that even the least educated layman could understand and envision in his head. Surprisingly I found the descriptions of medical procedures to be absolutely fascinating. This is probably the best book I've read this year, and it's one that I would strongly recommend to anyone who enjoys a good read. Yes, it might take longer to read than the latest action thriller, but it's one of those books that will stay with the reader for years to come.
Click Here to Download the Book
