![]() Shiva and Marion are raised in the hospital, among the patients, by two doctors. Medicine is a big part of the story though. I’m simply not used to having the interiors of human beings described in such rich detail and so found it difficult to read some of the lengthier descriptions. I don’t think of myself as a squeamish person but I did find a lot of it hard to read. He doesn’t shy away from detailed, realistic, and graphic descriptions of illness, surgery, and anatomy. ![]() Verghese is a doctor in his own real life and it shows in his writing. Identical twin boys, Shiva and Marion, are born as their mother dies and their father flees. The story opens with a surprise birth – a nun who works at the hospital has gone into labour, despite the fact no one knew she was pregnant. The central setting of the novel is Missing Hospital (officially “Mission Hospital” but known as Missing locally). After reading about it, I felt like I wanted to visit Ethiopia. He draws the city well – its disparate backgrounds and all the unique history and colonialism that shaped it. ![]() ![]() Knowing very little about that time and place, I found Verghese’s descriptions fascinating. The book is set in Addis, Ethiopa in the 1950s and 60s. The good news is, it definitely can and does I had put off reading Cutting for Stone for quite some time, mostly, I think, from a fear that it couldn’t live up to its hype. Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese (Vintage Canada, 2010) ![]()
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