Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, 2009, Alfred A. Knopf, NY.
***** (5 stars -- my highest rating).
In post-Colonial India, a Catholic nun from the Carmelite Order of Madras and a trained nurse, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, is sent to N.E. Africa to staff one of the many missionary hospitals that exist there. On board the ship that is taking her to Africa she encounters a very private and quiet surgeon, Thomas Stone.
"Among the Calangute's passengers was a young surgeon -- a hawkeyed Englishman who was leaving the Indian Medical Service for better pastures. He was tall and strong, and his rugged features made him look hungry, yet he avoided the dining room. Sister Mary Joseph Praise had run into him, literally, on the second day of the voyage when she lost her footing on the wet metal stairs leading up from their quarters to the common room. The Englishman coming up behind her seized her where he could, in the region of her coccyx and her left rib cage. He righted her as if she were a little child. When she stuttered her thanks, he turned beet red; he was more flustered than she by this unexpected intimacy. She felt a bruising coming on where his hands had clutched her, but there was a quality to this discomfort that she did not mind. For days thereafter, she didn't see the Englishman."
Through an unusual set of circumstances Sister gets to know, trust, and love this man (and he in return). When their ship reaches Africa, their paths take them in different directions but very soon they meet at the missionary hospital called "Missing" in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Sister Mary Joseph Praise becomes Stone's third hand in the operating theater and through the years they become a very successful team at the hospital helping poor and affluent locals who seek them.
On the fateful day that this partnership is broken due to Sister's death, twin boys Shiva and Marion are born at Missing. In the womb their heads were joined together, but after birth and separation of heads, they are still somehow able to share their thoughts and feelings without verbal communication. This book is the story of Shiva and Marion as seen through Marion's eyes. But to characterize it simply as the story of Shiva and Marion would do it great disservice as it also gives you insightful glimpses of Colonial and post-Colonial India, of the life and times of Emperor Haile Sellasie of Ethiopia (you'll learn here why Bob Marley and his followers are called "rastafarians"), of the politics of N.E. Africa, and most importantly of medicine, surgery, and the medical system in the U.S. and elsewhere. This is one of those books that is bold, grand and sweeping in its intent but one that does not disappoint. The writing is simple but at the same time the pictures that are painted are vivid and colorful.
I now see medicine and particularly the surgeon's role in a completely new light thanks to this book. The writer himself is a doctor and surgeon who is currently a chaired professor at Stanford University -- obviously he knows a little about the subject matter. I've found
myself in the operation theater twice in the last four years and always entered it -- or rather wheeled into it -- with fear. While I have no desire to be back there anytime soon, I will be a lot less fearful next time knowing a little more about the science of surgery than I knew before.
After reading two pages of this book, I was hooked and it would be no exaggeration if I said I couldn't put this book down. It made me laugh but it also brought tears to my eyes -- so powerful is this story of love and sacrifice and the tragedy of Africa. This book belongs way up there in my list of books I won't forget for a long time -- I give it my highest rating.
