Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, 2009

Abraham Verghese is a physician who is a chair and professor at Standford University Medical School and a writer who completed the Masters Program at the prestigious Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Possessing such a high caliber of intellect and talent at two such different fields is astoundingly impressive and the results is an amazing novel that will transport the reader to many different worlds.

While reading Cutting for Stone, I felt like I was transported to Ethiopia and the world of medicine despite the fact that I have never been to Ethiopia or studied medicine.

Verghese is able to fluidly weave highly clinical terms and Ethiopian culture into this story of twin sons growing up in Ethiopia to physician parents working at one of the few hospitals in the capital of Addis Ababa.

The novel is so well written and revolves around universal themes such as love and family, that it was easy to imagine the characters, locale and the events that unfolded without cumbersome paragraphs of explanation.

I teared up and could not put the book down during many sections of the book, especially at the end.

Photo of an Addis Ababa hospital, 2012.
I can imagine the story unfolding here...

Wanting
 A powerful theme running throughout the novel is the theme of wanting - either chasing or running away from what you want.

In Africa, there is a common childhood tale about a miserly Baghdad merchant named Abu Kassem.  Kassem possesses a pair of slippers that he wears down to the seems.

He is finally ready to part with his slippers, but when he tries to dispose of them, it always end in misfortune.

For example, he throws his slippers out of his window and they hit a pregnant woman who ends up miscarrying.

(Apparently, Africans don't mess around when it comes to bad things...) 

Commenting on the story, the central father-figure character Ghosh says:

"The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family,  own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't.  If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more.  Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny."

Other Quotes
While reading Cutting for Stone, I jotted down a few other quotes and passages that resonated.

"Wasn't that the definition of home?  Not where you are from, but where you are wanted?"

"So often we never truly see our own family and it is for others to tell us that they've grown taller or older?"

"It was often the second mistake that came in the haste to correct the first mistake that did the patient in."

"It is an axiom of motorcycling that you must always look in the direction you want to go and never at what you are trying to avoid."

"At school, I knew girls who were neither ugly nor beautiful but who saw themselves one way or the other, and that convectoin made it come true."

"Call me old-fashioned," Deepak said, "but I've always believed that hard work pays off.  Do the right thing, put up with unfairness, selfishness, stay true to yourself...one day it all works out."