Fortunately for me, it was a fast read, and a good one, too. But at 670 pages, and with the 15 challenge going to April 30 and my book group the first week of May, I was feeling a little pressed. So I was responsible for me having to read it.) I was lucky to be able to borrow it from a friend, as the library queue was ridiculous. I’d instigated a 15 books in 15 days with 15 blogs challenge, but still had to read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese for my book group (and while it wasn’t exactly my pick, it had been one I’d suggested. For obvious reasons!ĪV shrinks the time between the socialist-toned coup and the revolution that toppled the emperor in 1977 and turned so violent, but otherwise the historical context is well represented.I found myself in a bit of a pinch a few weeks ago. I went out of town to a mission guest house and hospital instead. I might have, except there was a shoot-to-kill curfew in place. In sorting that out, we visited the hospital this story is based on, and talked to the doctor about my having the baby there. Īnother overlap in my life and this story–I was visiting my folks in Ethiopia in 1977, when my husband got a bad case of hepatitis and we had to stay for the birth of our first child. I remember wondering about those rocket-shaped gray things nestled under the wings of the plane. Things had settled down, Jean Haspels and I got special permission to go out and play, and we were outside when the bomber went right overhead, low, breaking the sound barrier and carrying bombs it dropped on the palace. We were sent home in the middle of the day (exciting, for a 10 year old!) and then were house-bound for most of the next week, listening to gunfire. I actually lived through some of what he writes about–during the attempted coup of 1960, I was in my first year of boarding school in Addis Ababa. Because I was raised in Ethiopia (1954-1968), and went back to teach (1989-1996) I was totally struck by the cultural context, and especially, the sights, sounds, smells and “sensory feelings” Abraham Verghese captures so well.
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