Cutting for Stone

Cutting for Stone (2009), Abraham Verghese's third book and first novel, is the tragic and engrossing story of twin brothers born to an Indian nun and an English surgeon at an Addis Ababa mission hospital. Marion Praise Stone, the elder twin, narrates the tale in hindsight as he reflects on the contingencies of love and war that pulled his family apart and, ultimately, brought it together again.

Verghese, himself an Ethiopian-born physician, is currently a professor of at Stanford University's School of Medicine. His medical knowledge informs this work but his emphases on compassion and sacrifice breathe life into his characters.

After Marion and his brother, Shiva, lose their mother in childbirth and are abandoned by their father, they are reared by their parents' colleagues, Hema and Ghosh. Their adoptive parents nurture the twins' medical aspirations but, more importantly, provide them with the moral compass to guide them through the heartbreaking trials of adulthood.

In the first half of the novel, I found myself most moved by the character of Hema, with her fierce love for her infant sons and her deep affection for the stalwart Ghosh. A tough and dedicated obstetrician, she is rendered vulnerable by her fear that she might lose the children to either illness or the return of their absent birth father. The growing tenderness of Hema and Ghosh's relationship as he becomes a pillar for both his family and the hospital was, for me, the highlight of the story. I was disappointed that, as Marion and Shiva grow older, Verghese's characterization of Hema loses much of its earlier vibrancy. The condensed time frame of the second half of the novel makes the plot seem rushed and shallow in places. Ultimately, I found the ending satisfying but a bit short of the work's emotional promise.

Who Fears Death

I enjoyed Nnedi Okorafor's debut novel Who Fears Death (2010) more than any I've read in quite a while. Although it's a post-apocalyptic fantasy, the plot is deeply rooted in the ethnic violence of modern Sudan and the use of rape as a weapon of war.

The thoughts and emotions expressed by Okorafor's finely-drawn main character, Onyesonwu, may be intelligible to women of many backgrounds. A child produced through the rape of her Okeke mother by a Nuru soldier, she struggles against both the stigma of her birth and the limitations imposed upon women within a patriarchal society. Her physical features mark her out as an Ewu pariah, yet her inner abilities destine her to fulfill a messianic prophecy.

Set amidst the horror and chaos of genocide, the novel's heart is a story of love, friendship, and courage that transcend both death and time.

The Book Of Lost Things

Before picking up The Book of Lost Things (2006), I had never heard of John Connolly, the author of the popular Charlie Parker mystery series. In addition to his adult fiction, he is also well known among young readers for his Samuel Johnson fantasy series. With this novel, Connolly departs from the series format and offers a feel-good, highly readable fable about childhood, loss, and the perils of wish fulfillment.

The story revolves around a young English boy mourning the death of his mother and grappling with his father's remarriage in the midst of World War II. Retreating into the world of books, he finds himself pursuing his late mother's voice into a land of nightmarish fairy tales. Unlike those in the friendlier versions deemed suitable for children, the characters and situations he encounters are closely aligned with the Grimms' dark originals.

Once I started, I flew through this book within a few hours. Connolly's writing style is accessible and engaging with a happy balance between the familiar and the strange. The Book of Lost Things is escapism at its best. I'm surprised it hasn't been turned into a film yet but perhaps that's due to some of the gory descriptions. Fans of the film Pan's Labyrinth will find this a satisfying but somewhat tamer tale.

When We Were Orphans

After reading Kazuo Ishiguro's latest, The Buried Giant (2015), and his earlier effort, Never Let Me Go (2005), I was entranced by the dreamlike quality of his stories and decided to keep working my way through his backlist. I just finished When We Were Orphans (2000), another of Ishiguro's first-person narratives, this one set largely in the International Settlement in Shanghai before and during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

The narrator, an English detective named Christopher Banks, spends his childhood in Shanghai but grows to adulthood in England after his parents' mysterious disappearance. The novel centers on his internal conflict between finding out what really happened to his parents and his desire to recreate himself in only occasionally-troubled ignorance.

As in The Buried Giant, Ishiguro lays bare the ridiculous within his characters without sacrificing empathy. However, his narrator's lack of introspection can sometimes be grating. Bank's self-involvement precludes any real insight into the other characters, rendering them as one-dimensional as they appear from his perspective. On the other hand, this very tendency encourages the reader to imagine how Banks must appear to others and to reflect on the inconsistencies between his interpersonal encounters and his interior world.