December 2010 - Cutting for Stone (Verghese)

Post date: Dec 20, 2010 7:14:3 PM

It was great to see Maggie again after an absence of quite awhile, and to welcome Karen, a new member, to our December 16 book club meeting at my house. Our discussion of Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone was not particularly argumentative, as everyone thought the book was great. We admired the beautiful writing, the finely drawn and fascinating characters and the elaborate and gripping plot. One note of mild discontent was dissatisfaction about the short-shrift poor Genet gets. Karen (and others agreed) wanted more insight into Genet’s character, who was not nearly as fully developed as others, although her actions played such a large role in the interwoven storylines. Another point of mild criticism was the shifting narrative tone: the account of Marion’s experiences is definitively first person, but when recounting others stories, the narrator is omniscient, without much explanation as to how Marion could know all this detail.

One of the things that makes this book interesting is Verghese’s deft handling of rather detailed descriptions of surgical techniques and medical conditions. This, in combination with a review of possible books for January, led us to choose “fiction with a medical connection” as our current theme. So, for January we have chosen Molokai, a book about the leper colony in Hawaii. This was Jennie’s suggestion, so hopefully she’ll be able to come to book club, as she won’t have to find time to read the book—everybody is eager to welcome baby George to his first meeting!