Is there a doctor in the house?

Cutting for Stone
Abraham Verghese
Vintage Canada

Have you ever read one of those books that just seems to draw you so far into its world that you can't think about anything else?  I had that experience a couple of weeks ago while reading Abraham Verghese's Cutting for Stone.  I started it one night over supper at my local hangout.  Halfway through the first pint, I was hooked.  When the bartender asked if I wanted another, I declined and switched to water.  I knew I was going to have a late night.

The story itself focuses on Marion Stone -- who, along with his conjoined twin, Shiva, was born in an Ethiopian mission hospital during the latter part of Haile Selassie's reign.  The boys' mother, an Indian nun named Mary Joseph Praise, dies in childbirth.  The boys' father, a British surgeon with questionable social skills and more baggage than a cargo hold, goes mad with grief and abandons the babies upon their mother's death. The newborns aren't unwanted for long as another mission doctor is immediately drawn to them and decides to become their substitute mother. She, in turn, shanghais a colleague to assist with their care and not surprisingly, the two of them fall in love. Oh -- and this all happens within the first few chapters.  Is it any wonder that I couldn't put it down?

Weaving in and out of the narrative, and as influential as any character in the text, is the novel's setting.  I learned more about Ethiopian and Eritrean history and culture from this story than from any news magazine or television piece.  The Ethiopia of Verghese's novel is definitely somewhere that I'd want to visit.  Whether it exists anymore is immaterial as I will definitely revisit the land through the pages of this novel.  Cutting for Stone gets five Hippocratic Oaths out of five.