"Cutting For Stone" by Abraham Verghese - *****

> Epigraph: "And because I love this life, I know I shall love death as well. The child cries out when, From the right breast the mother, Takes it away, in the very next moment, To find in the left one,
Its consolation." Rabindranath Tagore

> Setting: Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia, twins birthdate, 9/20/1954

> Characters

>p.3 - "So fertile was that loamy soil that Matron....cautioned us against stepping into it barefoot lest we sprout new toes."

>p.5 - "Years later I leaned that St. Teresa's recurrent vision of the angel was call the transverberation, which the dictionary said was the soul 'inflamed' by the love of God, and the heart "pierced" by divine love; the metaphors of her faith were also the metaphors of medicine."

>p.6 - "Because, Marion, you are an instrument of God. Don't leave the instrument sitting in its case, my son. Play! Leave no part of your instrument unexplored. Why settle for 'Three Blind Mice' when you can play the 'Gloria'?"

>p.31 - "If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans."

>p.53 - called a large woman "magnified"...I like that

> first betrayal was Shiva doing something separate from Marion, learning to dance

> Ghosh loves Hema

>p.64 - "Children were the foot wedged in the closing door, the glimmer of hope that in reincarnation there would be some house to go to, even if one came back as a dog, or a mouse, or a flea that lived on the bodies of men."

> Characters: Twins...Marion & Shiva, their mother...Sister Mary Joseph Praise, the father(?) ...Dr. Stone, Hema...the adoptive mother and the OB/GYN who delivered the twins, Ghosh....adoptive father, Genet....daughter of the cook, best friend of the twins

> Title: p.72> "....while the good doctor recited Cicero and excised a part of himself as blithely as if he were cutting for stone on the body of another. What neither the reader nor Stone would accept was that his self-amputation was as much an act of conceit as it was an act of heroism".......he amputated his own finger after injuring it, Sister Mary Joseph Praise helped him...hence..."Cutting for Stone"

> New Vocab: "excrescences": 1)an abnormal outgrowth on a body or plant, 2) an unattractive or superfluous addition or feature.

>p.112 - "But it was as if the twins' place in the firmament as well as in the earthly order of things had been secured for them even before they were born; she knew that nothing - not even the familiar scent of eucalyptus, or the sight of its leaves thrust into a nostril, or the the drum roll of rain on corrugated tin roof, or the visceral odor of a freshly opened abdomen - could ever be the same again."

> I like the idea Marion uses to describe Shiva's behavior....mentally going up to the tree house in his mind and rolling down the shutters

> the story is marked by progressive, minute separations, all painful for Marion
> Rosina circumcised Genet when she thought Marion deflowered her, it was Shiva


> LibraryThing Review: Normally, I would give a novel such as this a 4 star rating, especially when the author acknowledges how many of the lovely phrases were taken from elsewhere (although credit is due for the acknowledgment). However, I found the story itself incredibly moving. In fact I think I was in tears for the last 75 pages or so. A tale of destiny, love, and passion for life make "Cutting For Stone" a truly memorable read.