Book Report: Cutting for Stone, by Abraham Verghese

So a friend sent Cutting for Stone home with me several months ago, and it has been languishing on my bedside while I finished with Team of Rivals and various other book club obligations.  I actually was not all that excited about it, but IT WAS A STUNNER.  It was 658 pages that felt like a couple of chapters.  The author is actually a native of Tennessee by way of Addis Ababa, and writes a really beautiful story that draws from his own experiences in Africa and New York.

I felt like Abraham Verghese was able to write about horrendous circumstances with a grace and innocence that gave the people involved dignity.  The brutality of life in Africa amidst the tribes and stigmas of local diseases and abysmal pre-natal care are told with great compassion, and maybe in a way that only a native could tell, which was with the understanding that this was a way of life that was sometimes unpreventable.

The story centers around identical twins who are surprisingly born to a nun at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa.  The mysterious parentage of the children ends with their being orphaned and adopted into the Missing family.  While raised by educated physicians, their caretakers are locals who are inundated with the ways of Africa and the twins must navigate their dual life using the best of advice and influence from both quarters.

Both boys are led to a life in medicine, and they work and attend school in an Africa that is always changing to and away from their favor.  There is a great love story and the boys are led, each in their own way, from Africa to America and back.  Their search brings them to their biological parents and the resolution of their love story.

It was a great read, beautifully written and really just one of the best novels I have read in a long time.  I was very sad to see the last page.  You must read it!!