Book of the Month - Cutting for Stone

A book that has left such a deep and long-lasting impression on me is this month’s Book of the Month, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. Unfortunately for me, powerhouse novels such as this, is a rarity, so when I do stumble across one, I am completely blown away by its masterful storytelling.

Briefly, this monumental tale begins with Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a beautiful South Asian nun, who gives birth to conjoined twins in a mission hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Their mother dies and the father, a British surgeon named Thomas Stone disappears. Thus sets the stage for this epic saga, chronicling the lives of twin brothers, Marion and Shiva Stone.

Separated at birth, the twins grow up in Ethiopia, during the tumultuous reign of Emperor Haile Selasisse, and it is here that Verghese introduces the reader to the ancient and exotic world of Ethiopia with all its flavors, colors, scents and sounds. These vivid descriptions of Ethiopian history and culture are wonderfully balanced with the rich and intriguing descriptions of the main characters in the novel: Indian expatriate doctors raising their adopted twin sons, born to an Indian nun and American surgeon, with the help of an Eritrean caretaker and her own daughter – a girl, whose impact on the boys’ lives is very profound and irreversible.

Major themes like the nature of love and loss, separation and displacement; Christianity and the ministry of healing are masterfully handled, and never overshadow the fact that this is, at its core, the absolutely unforgettable story of two brothers, Shiva and Marion.