by Abraham Verghese
I'll probably say this a few times this year, but my goodness, hands-down, no-contest, straight-up, BEST BOOK I HAVE READ SO FAR THIS YEAR.
"Cutting for Stone" is an amazing, beautiful, awe-inspiring, insert-fifty-glowing-adjectives-here type of book. Reviewers use words like "Richly written, vivid, masterpiece," and I couldn't agree more.
Set largely in Ethiopia and America in the 1950s- 1980s, the story is that of two twins born attached at the head. Surgically separated after the horrendous birth that kills their mother and drives their father to leave the hospital - and his babies- behind, the twins are raised by two doctors working at "Missing" hospital in Addis Ababa.
While each twin exhibits unique personality traits, their initial tie remains strong and causes intersections throughout their lives. Both twins will follow in their adopted parents' footsteps to careers in medicine, though their specialties and motivations will differ greatly. One twin will travel to America, and experience life as a medical resident in the 1970s & 1980s, before returning to Addis Ababa.
I literally couldn't put this book down, and am thankful that my mother had the presence of mind to give it to me in the chilly winter months, when I wasn't busy with work and could basically abandon my life for two days to read it while getting ready in the morning, brushing my teeth, eating breakfast, etc etc etc.
It's written by Abraham Verghese, a physician who also wrote "My Own Country," his story of working in an eastern Tennessee hospital and specializing in infectious disease during the onset of the AIDS epidemic, when the first HIV/AIDS patient arrives in the town. This book is absolutely on my list of books to read this year!
Showing posts with label a thoughtful-ending book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label a thoughtful-ending book. Show all posts
Monday, March 7, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Light of Day
by Jamie M. Saul
A few weeks ago, I happened upon a Borders' bookstore that was closing and had marked down their remaining inventory. Though the top two floors had already been seriosly picked over, I hit jackpot in the basement with books marked down to 99 cents!!
I picked up several, including "Light of Day," and figured that at 99 cents each, I'd lump any bad ones as a loss and happily put the $6 total I spent towards the one good one.
I haven't read them all yet, but so far? "Light of Day" makes the entire purchase worth it.
Why?
OH MY GOD.
Compelling storyline.
Amazing characters.
Intruiging friendships.
Revealing sub-plot flashbacks.
Twists and turns.
Everything, absolutely everything, requires you to keep turning the pages until you find out what's next. In the first ten pages alone, you meet Jack Owens, the character who will chart the course of the rest of the book through his actions and memories, and learn that he's a man haunted by the past- despite having left and moved to a small town to escape it.
And that's where the body is found.
I won't give away anything more, because you quite simply just have to go read this book, if you're the sort who enjoys intruige, suspense, and questions that don't always have answers.
A few weeks ago, I happened upon a Borders' bookstore that was closing and had marked down their remaining inventory. Though the top two floors had already been seriosly picked over, I hit jackpot in the basement with books marked down to 99 cents!!
I picked up several, including "Light of Day," and figured that at 99 cents each, I'd lump any bad ones as a loss and happily put the $6 total I spent towards the one good one.
I haven't read them all yet, but so far? "Light of Day" makes the entire purchase worth it.
Why?
OH MY GOD.
Compelling storyline.
Amazing characters.
Intruiging friendships.
Revealing sub-plot flashbacks.
Twists and turns.
Everything, absolutely everything, requires you to keep turning the pages until you find out what's next. In the first ten pages alone, you meet Jack Owens, the character who will chart the course of the rest of the book through his actions and memories, and learn that he's a man haunted by the past- despite having left and moved to a small town to escape it.
And that's where the body is found.
I won't give away anything more, because you quite simply just have to go read this book, if you're the sort who enjoys intruige, suspense, and questions that don't always have answers.
Monday, February 7, 2011
The Rest Of Her Life and While I'm Falling
by Laura Moriarty
I was trolling around in the bargain areas at Borders when I discovered "While I'm Falling" by Laura Moriarty. The book cover was intruiging enough, but what really grabbed me was the single-sentence review on the cover.
"Moriarty keeps getting better and better."- Jodi Picoult.
JODI. PICOULT.
Um, confession. I might have a slightobsession author crush fondness for Jodi Picoult.
The kind that makes me run out and buy every single one of her books, the day it comes out, in hard cover, at full price.
Ahem.
Anyway, I figured that any book Jodi liked I'd be a fan of as well, so I picked up "While I'm Falling," and discovered a gem of a novel about the events in a character's life surrounding the first time she falls in love, including her relationship with her mother as her parents own marriage is questioned.
Later in the year I also picked up (or somehow acquired- it's possible, in fact, that this was one of my mother's book club picks that she passed along to me) "The Rest of Her Life," another Moriarty book with a Picoult endorsement on the cover. This one, again, focuses largely on the relationship between mother and daughter following a tragic accident.
In both, her characters are incredibly realistic and well done. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of her books!
I was trolling around in the bargain areas at Borders when I discovered "While I'm Falling" by Laura Moriarty. The book cover was intruiging enough, but what really grabbed me was the single-sentence review on the cover.
"Moriarty keeps getting better and better."- Jodi Picoult.
JODI. PICOULT.
Um, confession. I might have a slight
The kind that makes me run out and buy every single one of her books, the day it comes out, in hard cover, at full price.
Ahem.
Anyway, I figured that any book Jodi liked I'd be a fan of as well, so I picked up "While I'm Falling," and discovered a gem of a novel about the events in a character's life surrounding the first time she falls in love, including her relationship with her mother as her parents own marriage is questioned.
Later in the year I also picked up (or somehow acquired- it's possible, in fact, that this was one of my mother's book club picks that she passed along to me) "The Rest of Her Life," another Moriarty book with a Picoult endorsement on the cover. This one, again, focuses largely on the relationship between mother and daughter following a tragic accident.
In both, her characters are incredibly realistic and well done. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of her books!
Monday, January 3, 2011
Our Lady of The Lost And Found
by Diane Schoemperlen
The book jacket reviews call it "one of the most charming novels you're likely to read this year," (New Orleans Times-Picayune) and I have to say that I'd agreee.
The novel opens with the narrator becoming the author - who never reveals her name - as she writes the account of what has just happened to her over the course of a week she has spent with her new friend, Mary.....
.......as in, Mary, the Virgin; Mary, the Blessed Mother; Mary, who has been appearing to those in need for many, many years and is in need of a respite from it all.
That Mary.
So what initially seemed like a quirky, light read soon finds interesting questions brought to mind as the friendship between Mary and the author develops.
The novel runs between the author revealing bits of herself to Mary, spliced with historical accounts of Mary appearing to others in their time of need. We also see the development of Mary as a real, and witty at that, person- the kind that, as the author does, you might hang out at the mall with cracking jokes as the expense of the woman selling anti-aging cream ("Heaven forbid that a woman should look her age, Mary said, slipping her arm through mine. Imagine what that stuff could do for me. I'm two thousand years old and don't look a day over two hundred.")
I also found it extremely interesting how well the author developed the narrator's character, given the hinderance of never knowing her name. Instead, she chooses to divulge small insights into the narrators life throughout the book as well as lovely descriptive aside passages that help us develop a sense of her without naming her, for example, a passage setting the scene of doing a household chore while having a conversation:
"Ironing, I can honestly say, is one household chore that I do truly enjoiy. I find it relaxing and comforting; the smooth pointed glide of the iron, the steam hot smell of the fabric, the tug of the muscles in my upper arm. I still use a heavy steam iron that must be twenty years old now. I bought a new one once, not bcause there was anything wrong with the old one but just because I thought it was time. But I found it unsatisfying. It was too light in my hand, altogether lacking the serious and stalwart heft of the old one, so I returned it to the store with a flimsy excuse, got my money back, and caried on happily as before."
Seriously, I love this. I love this woman and her flimsy excuse and her crazy old steam iron.
There was one particular, longer passage about finding things that I loved towards the middle of the book, as well, which sums up quite a bit about the book for me.
"This new proliferation of Marys in my life would seem to bige lie to the popular nothiong that you are most likely to find something when you're not looking for it. This idea is most often offered in the spirit of consolation and encouragement to a single woman looking for a man and repeatedly coming up empty-handed and/or broken-hearted.
-Don't worry, people say. You'll find him when you least expect it. Once you stop looking, you'll find him for sure.
These well-meaning advisors may or may not go on to mention how a watched pot never boils.
In light of my recent experience of running into Mary everywhere I turn, it now seems to me that, much as the old notion of finding something when you're not looking for it has often been proved true, the opposite is also equally true: you find what you are looking for. Sometimes, once your blinders have been removed, you find it over and over again.
So there was Mary: on television, in newspapers and magazines, in a friend's neighborhood, in my stamp collection, at the beauty salon, the grocery store, and my favorite downtown restaurant.
And, on a Thursday afternoon in April, there she was among the lawn ornaments just where she had always been. If only I had thought to look."
Look. Read. Enjoy.
The book jacket reviews call it "one of the most charming novels you're likely to read this year," (New Orleans Times-Picayune) and I have to say that I'd agreee.
The novel opens with the narrator becoming the author - who never reveals her name - as she writes the account of what has just happened to her over the course of a week she has spent with her new friend, Mary.....
.......as in, Mary, the Virgin; Mary, the Blessed Mother; Mary, who has been appearing to those in need for many, many years and is in need of a respite from it all.
That Mary.
So what initially seemed like a quirky, light read soon finds interesting questions brought to mind as the friendship between Mary and the author develops.
The novel runs between the author revealing bits of herself to Mary, spliced with historical accounts of Mary appearing to others in their time of need. We also see the development of Mary as a real, and witty at that, person- the kind that, as the author does, you might hang out at the mall with cracking jokes as the expense of the woman selling anti-aging cream ("Heaven forbid that a woman should look her age, Mary said, slipping her arm through mine. Imagine what that stuff could do for me. I'm two thousand years old and don't look a day over two hundred.")
I also found it extremely interesting how well the author developed the narrator's character, given the hinderance of never knowing her name. Instead, she chooses to divulge small insights into the narrators life throughout the book as well as lovely descriptive aside passages that help us develop a sense of her without naming her, for example, a passage setting the scene of doing a household chore while having a conversation:
"Ironing, I can honestly say, is one household chore that I do truly enjoiy. I find it relaxing and comforting; the smooth pointed glide of the iron, the steam hot smell of the fabric, the tug of the muscles in my upper arm. I still use a heavy steam iron that must be twenty years old now. I bought a new one once, not bcause there was anything wrong with the old one but just because I thought it was time. But I found it unsatisfying. It was too light in my hand, altogether lacking the serious and stalwart heft of the old one, so I returned it to the store with a flimsy excuse, got my money back, and caried on happily as before."
Seriously, I love this. I love this woman and her flimsy excuse and her crazy old steam iron.
There was one particular, longer passage about finding things that I loved towards the middle of the book, as well, which sums up quite a bit about the book for me.
"This new proliferation of Marys in my life would seem to bige lie to the popular nothiong that you are most likely to find something when you're not looking for it. This idea is most often offered in the spirit of consolation and encouragement to a single woman looking for a man and repeatedly coming up empty-handed and/or broken-hearted.
-Don't worry, people say. You'll find him when you least expect it. Once you stop looking, you'll find him for sure.
These well-meaning advisors may or may not go on to mention how a watched pot never boils.
In light of my recent experience of running into Mary everywhere I turn, it now seems to me that, much as the old notion of finding something when you're not looking for it has often been proved true, the opposite is also equally true: you find what you are looking for. Sometimes, once your blinders have been removed, you find it over and over again.
So there was Mary: on television, in newspapers and magazines, in a friend's neighborhood, in my stamp collection, at the beauty salon, the grocery store, and my favorite downtown restaurant.
And, on a Thursday afternoon in April, there she was among the lawn ornaments just where she had always been. If only I had thought to look."
Look. Read. Enjoy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)