Book Review; Cutting for Stones by Abraham Verghese

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese is the first book that I read on the Kindle and I do believe the Kindle did impact my relationship with the book, the words and the characters. Cutting for Stone made a number of top ten lists for best books in 2009 and many times while I was at the bookstore I had stopped and picked the book up. I liked the cover and the way it felt in my hands yet I never purchased the book.

I am an avid reader and have been debating whether or not to purchase the Kindle for a number of months. A dear friend got one for Christmas and she lent it to me along with the offer of purchasing a book from Amazon. My friend is much more of an intellectual then I am so while I one hundred percent appreciated her offer and generosity I wanted to make sure that I purchased something that she might also enjoy since it was her Kindle.

I picked Cutting for Stone. The story takes place mostly in Ethiopia but it is very easy to forget this as the characters all live together at a mission hospital. It took me awhile to get into the story, according to the Kindle about 18% of the book. That is one of the interesting things about the Kindle is you do not know what page you are on you only know the percentage you have read. I found myself on a number of occasions trying to figure out when the percentage changed it for me it turned out to be between every five and six "pages" I read on the Kindle but I digress.

The story is about a set of identical twins who are literally connected at birth by a flap of skin and veins and arteries at birth. The babies are separated and then abandoned by their father after their mother dies. A doctor at the hospital decides that it is a sign and the twins are hers. The man who has loved her for years joins her and together they raise the boys. How are the same and yet very different. Verghese is a doctor by trade and he does a wonderful job of describing medical procedures that take place in the daily lives of the characters as so many are doctors and nurses. This was one of my favorite aspects about the book.

While the boys are raised by an amazing set of parents one of them is always on the look out for his biological father and this impacts his story and his decisions which lead to a satisfying conclusion. You will also learn some of the history of Ethiopia and the struggles that have taken place over the last four or five decades.

While I may not have loved the Kindle experience I must say by the end I did love this book and in fact I think that it is one that will stay with me for a long time.