Cutting for Stone--review

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
Vintage
667 pages

Cutting for Stone begins with one of the goriest birth stories I've ever read.  A beloved nun is ripped asunder by the father of her twins during delivery in an effort to save both mother and babies.  Not an auspicious beginning for her children, who begin their lives abandoned by their panicked and grief-stricken father, a famous and emotionally distant surgeon.  The novel is narrated by one of the twins, Marion, and relates the boys' coming of age during a particularly tense period in Ethiopian history and within the make-shift family that developed to care for the infant twins.  As they mature, the boys struggle with establishing their identity, both as brothers and as orphans, and betrayal and heartbreak mark their lives' important milestones. The word "trauma" kept coming back to me as I read:  Marion deals with the physical trauma of the operating room and with the emotional trauma of failed relationships.  The story is punctuated by moments of graphic human destruction--the scene where the protagonist describes his culpability in the death of a soldier is particularly awful and sad.

This is a beautiful book, although it is slow going.  The novel is heavily descriptive and frequently digresses from the main storyline with surgical narratives and information about Ethiopia's political/social history.  I think Verghese might have benefited with some courageous editing to help the masterful parts of his work shine. However, the story is worth slogging through the slow parts, and I recommend it to anyone willing to put in the time with this dense novel.  Verghese is at his best when he's exploring the intimate relationships between people and the trauma we can inflict on those we love the most.  I'm looking forward to his next work.