Cutting for Stone - October CC Book Club Selection

[psychmom]

<p>It was hard to read this book because of the many grim topics, but I just have to mention a passage where I just laughed myself silly: It was the scene with the taxi driver, as Marion makes his way from the NY airport to the hospital. The whole twisting of “screw your courage to the sticking place” was hilarious!</p>

[bookworm]

<p>I liked the lead character in Hedgehog better, and I admit that I was angry at the author for having her die when her future looked so promising.</p>

<p>I was annoyed with Verghese for all the 'coincidences", like the Ethiopian restaurant being owned by his old friend, the letter suddenly loosened, and the life/death decisions. I didn’t want Shiva to die so that Marion would return home and learn to live in the present.</p>

[Mary13]

<p>In reading a review online for another book (nothing to do with Cutting for Stone), I came across the following observation:</p>

<p>

Coincidence in a novel can be the sign of a failed plot or a carefully deployed literary device. We can mock rickety narratives for relying on coincidences, yet recognise that certain accomplished novelists insist on them. Where would Dickens be without coincidences?

</p>

<p>I am a fan of Cutting for Stone, so I am going to pick “carefully deployed literary device” over “failed plot.” I think for the most part, Verghese consciously chose to have the coincidences unfold as they did, to achieve his goal of writing what he called, “an old-fashioned, truth-telling story.” The Publishers Weekly review of Cutting for Stone said, “the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel.” However, I agree with bookworm that some of those coincidences–like the hiding of the letter–straddle that line between being a deliberate, poetic literary choice and an awkward plot device. Still, it’s a small complaint. When a book has murder, suicide, rebellion, tuberculosis, syphilis, and genital mutilation, who am I to worry about a coincidence or two?</p>

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

<p>^" When a book has murder, suicide, rebellion, tuberculosis, syphilis, and genital mutilation, who am I to worry about a coincidence or two?"</p>

<p>Funny!</p>

[BUandBC82]

<p>^^ I agree. That’s funny.</p>

<p>The CC book club books I have read are The Shadow of the Wind, Let the Great World Spin, and Cutting for Stone. I also read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo which people talked about here on CC, but I don’t know if it was ever a book club book. I have enjoyed all of these books, with Cutting for Stone the one I liked best.</p>

[ignatius]

<p>I finished Cutting for Stone and I like it. I found the sense of place strong, whether Ethiopia or NYC, as I did the characters, both main and secondary. I do not like Genet, though I never felt that she is a caricature, but rather a self-centered, selfish, destructive force. Unfortunately she reminds me somewhat of someone I know. To me Ghosh becomes the cornerstone of both book and family rather than Thomas. Long after death, his influence can be felt on Marion, Hema, Thomas, et al. The book ends with Marion completing something that Ghosh put into motion. </p>

<p>I have a thought about the hidden letter: perhaps Ghosh felt that he laid what groundwork he could with his request to Marion to contact Thomas. Perhaps he sensed that Marion had work to do before he could fulfill the request as Ghosh intended. I’m not certain that had Ghosh handed Marion the letter at that time that the letter would have ever made it to Thomas intact. Marion’s break-and-enter with intent to destroy shows that Marion still had a long way to go. So with knowledge of his son in mind, Ghosh lays the groundwork, places the letter in something of meaning to Marion, hands Shiva the other part and leaves the rest to fate. I like it.</p>

<p>So - have to say some of the medical detail strayed into the too-much-information category for me. Do I really want to be in the know concerning a vasectomy? I think not. And when Thomas’ mother died, a simple “It was a bloody death and traumatized the young boy” would have sufficed. I picked up another book after Part 1 as I hadn’t invested in the characters and the medical details didn’t pull me in. I knew I’d pick it back up - just needed something else before I did so. I also feel that the medical details added unnecessarily to the length of the book and furthered my need for an interim read. After Part 1 I still had about 500 pages to go; if it had been less, I doubt I would have strayed.</p>

<p>Other thoughts: Cutting for Stone serves as an example of bildungsroman, as does The Shadow of the Wind. Perhaps even more so - and the twin mysticism found in The Thirteenth Tale more than crept in.</p>

<p>Not my favorite of the CC books, but not the least favorite either.</p>

[BUandBC82]

<p>^^ I really like your thoughts on the hidden letter.</p>

<p>It’s interesting how different books capture you. I read this book pretty quickly and didn’t mind the surgery details at all. It actually took me longer to read Let the Great World Spin, a much shorter book.</p>

[Mary13]

<p>

@ignatius

perhaps Ghosh felt that he laid what groundwork he could with his request to Marion to contact Thomas. Perhaps he sensed that Marion had work to do before he could fulfill the request as Ghosh intended. I’m not certain that had Ghosh handed Marion the letter at that time that the letter would have ever made it to Thomas intact. Marion’s break-and-enter with intent to destroy shows that Marion still had a long way to go. So with knowledge of his son in mind, Ghosh lays the groundwork, places the letter in something of meaning to Marion, hands Shiva the other part and leaves the rest to fate.

</p>

<p>That is a great explanation. And you give Verghese more credit than I did, which I think he deserves. You are right that Marion would not (initially) have delivered that letter. </p>

<p>I had forgotten about the scene in which Marion enters Thomas Stone’s apartment wanting “to do damage.” It’s interesting that he changes his mind when he sees the photo of young Thomas and his mother: “They were posed like Madonna and Child.” More religious imagery.</p>

<p>What do you think it means that instead of destroying the apartment, he opens everything?:</p>

<p>

Instead, I opened all the kitchen cabinets and left the doors ajar. I pulled down the oven door. I opened both sides of the fridge. I took the top off the juice container. I opened the bathroom cabinets. I unscrewed toothpaste, shampoo, and conditioner, setting the tops carefully alongside the bottles. I opened anything that had a lid or a cover. I left open wardrobe, chest of drawers, filing cabinet, ink bottle, medicine bottles. I opened the windows.

</p>

<p>It creates quite a vivid picture, doesn’t it? A positive way of looking at it would be that Marion is seeking the truth—he will allow no more secrets, nothing can be hidden any longer, everything must be exposed. A negative way of looking at it would be that Marion creates chaos by opening that which should remain closed. </p>

<p>Marion takes Thomas’ finger with him when he leaves. I suspect that like his mother, he doesn’t ever discard it, but keeps it as a sort of holy relic.</p>

[BUandBC82]

<p>Mary13 - I lean towards your positive view of Marion’s break in of Thomas’ apartment. I believe it was symbolic of exposing everything in the past and finding the truth.</p>

<p>

Marion takes Thomas’ finger with him when he leaves. I suspect that like his mother, he doesn’t ever discard it, but keeps it as a sort of holy relic.

</p>

<p>I think the whole finger thing goes back to your description of Thomas as an incomplete person. Sister Mary and Marion both kept the finger because they needed/wanted Thomas to be with them. Marion at least needed Thomas to acknowledge him. None of them were really complete. They all needed each other.</p>

[CBBBlinker]

<p>Just caught up on the last 2 pages of posts. I liked both LTGWS and this book, but found it easier to sit and read the former for long stretches of time. (Not sure if this was totally due to the book itself or what I had going on at the time I was reading.)</p>

<p>Re: Mary13’s quote above about Marion referring to himself as “we” after Shiva dies – I get the whole twin thing, but found this a little over the top. I guess it’s because of my brother’s being identical twins – there are connections between them that go beyond my connections with them as a “regular” sibling, but I just found the ShivaMarion thing somewhat excessive. OTOH, my brothers weren’t physically joined in any way at birth, so I don’t really have a sense of what role that could play. Plus, there’s the aspect that this is a novel, and the connection between the 2 is a huge part of the story.</p>

<p>I could easily envision Marion going through Thomas’ apartment opening everything – and liked that scenario better than if he had gone through trashing and destroying the place.</p>

[Mary13]

<p>No twins in my family, so I was able to maintain my suspension of disbelief regarding Shiva and Marion’s relationship. But maybe the whole ShivaMarion concept isn’t as “out there” as it seems. I looked up conjoined twins just for the heck of it, and as you can imagine, it took me to some pretty strange places on the internet. But then I found this, in a book called Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body by Rosemarie Garland Thomson:</p>

<p>

It is clear for both sets of conjoined twins that they are two separate subjects, in the sense that they have different personalities, preferences, and styles. Yet it also seems evident that the usual hard and fast distinction between the boundaries of one subject and another are continually blurred: speech patterns and even sentences are shared; all their experiences are shared; they do not need to consult over decisions but make them in unison automatically. Change and Eng, for example, even wrote their letters in the first person singular, using “I” where others would have presumed a “we” was appropriate, and signing themselves in the joint name “ChangEng.”

</p>

<p>Thomson goes on to add, “In separating conjoined twins, one does not thereby create two autonomous beings, only as close as identical twins; conjoined twins are bonded through the psychical inscription of their historical, even if not current, corporeal links.”</p>

<p>Now for all I know, Rosemarie Garland Thomson might be the biggest hack in the world; but still, it’s an interesting perspective, and one that might have influenced Verghese.</p>

[compaq10]

<p>Hi, you guys read a lot, what do you think about the Literature Nobel Prize. Do you look for these winner’s books in the book stores ?</p>

[Mary13]

<p>^ The titles we pick for CC aren’t from any particular list. They are books we’ve heard good things about, either by word of mouth, a book review, or even :eek: Oprah. So far, none of our selections have been by winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature. I looked at the list—I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve never heard of quite a few of those authors!</p>

[compaq10]

<p>Thanks Mary13. Sorry about jumping in. Your answer is very helpful for my own study</p>

[Mary13]

<p>Shall we open the floor for suggestions for the next book? Here are a few choices that have been on our “possible” list:</p>

<p>Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson (however, this is still only in hardcover)
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
These is My Words by Nancy Turner</p>

<p>I’m sure there are many more good ideas out there. Remember, we’re not tied to modern lit—we can always do something crazy like (re) read Wuthering Heights or Bleak House. Any classics out there that you’ve always wished you’d read, but never got around to?</p>

[psychmom]

<p>I’ve read Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, but never got around to reading Moonstone, which is considered the first detective novel.</p>

[Mary13]

<p>^ Well, that’s a freakish coincidence…Of all the possible books in the world, I just downloaded The Moonstone to my Kindle the other day. I’ve never read it either.</p>

[BUandBC82]

<p>I just looked up all 4 suggested books. They all sound like they would be good. The two I would pick first for me would be The Moonstone and Major Pettigrew.</p>

[CBBBlinker]

<p>I’m open to any book.</p>

<p>Going back to THIS book – any comments on the title? Stone = last name; “I will not cut for stone” from the Hippocratic oath; other???</p>

[BUandBC82]

<p>Here’s Verghese’s answer in a author interview.</p>

<p>

Q: Where does the title “Cutting for Stone” come from?
A: There is a line in the Hippocratic Oath that says: . . . I will not cut for stone, even for patients in whom
the disease is manifest . . . It stems from the days when bladder stones were epidemic, a cause of great
suffering, probably from bad water and who knows what else. Adults and children suffered so much
with these—and died prematurely of infection and kidney failure. There were itinerant stone cutters—
lithologists—who could cut either into the bladder or the perineum and get the stone out, but
because they cleaned the knife by wiping it on their blood-stiffened surgical aprons, patients usually
died of infection the next day. Hence the proscription, “thou shall not cut for stone.”
It has always seemed to me a curious thing to say when we recite the oath in this day and age.
But I love the Hippocratic Oath (or oaths, because its origins and authorship are far from clear), and
always try to attend medical school commencement. When the new graduates stand and take the
oath, all the physicians in the room are invited to rise and retake the oath. You see many physician
parents and physician siblings standing as their son or daughter or brother or sister takes the oath. It
chokes me up every time. Not only am I renewing my faith, but I am bursting with pride in seeing my
students graduate—another part of the oath is “to teach them this art, if they desire to learn it; to give
a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my children and to the children
of those who instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law.”
How does all this relate to my novel? It isn’t just that the main characters have the surname ‘Stone’; I was hoping the phrase would resonate for the reader just as it does for me, and that it would have several levels of meaning in the context of the narrative.

</p>

<p>[Cutting</a> for Stone by Abraham Verghese - eBook - Random House - Author Interview](<a href=“http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307271341&view=auqa]Cutting”>http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780307271341&view=auqa)</p>