by Abraham Verghese, 2009
Amazingly original story! Twin boys, Marion and Shiva, born at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to a nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, who died in childbirth. Their father, a gifted surgeon, Thomas Stone, abandons them at their birth. The twins are raised by Hema and Ghosh, 2 doctors at Missing. Ghosh is the most wonderful, loving man in the world and he adores Hema, an attractive Indian gynecologist. She falls in love with him as he helps her care for the twins. When he says he’s going back to live in his quarters, she cries, “No.” She agrees to marry him for one year. They can renew each year. The early years are beautiful and happy. Once the twins become teens, bad stuff starts to happen. Genet, Marion’s first and only love, is deflowered by Shiva. Her mother decides to have her circumcised. Marion stays with her as she nearly died. Then Genet’s mother hangs herself. Genet is the bane of Marion all his life. She takes part in an Eritrean uprising and Marion is forced to leave Ethiopia. He goes to America and works through his internship/residency at Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, a poor person’s hospital in NYC. There he is helping to save the life of a young black man during surgery and his father, unknown to him, watches. He finds out he was Dr. Thomas Stone. He goes to him in Boston and gets into his apt. and takes Dr. Stone’s finger in a jar and leaves his mother’s bookmark. Thomas Stone comes to him in NYC and tells him his life story. Marion then understands him and is no longer angry at him.
Meanwhile Shiva has become a gifted surgeon in Ethiopia for vaginal fistula, a terrible condition of child brides who had problems in childbirth that damaged them horribly. He never went to medical school – it was his photographic memory and Hema’s tutelage.
Genet comes to visit Marion in NYC and to apologize. Marion has sex with her and winds up sick to death. Hema and Shiva come to him (Ghosh has died) and Shiva gives him part of his liver. Thomas Stone operates. They are successful but Shiva ends up with bleeding in the brain about 3 weeks later and dies. Marion returns to Ethiopia and works at Missing Hospital. He has forgiven his father and brother and is a gifted trauma surgeon.
page 396: “In America, my initial impression was that death or the possibility of it always seemed to come as a surprise, as if we took it for granted that we were immortal, and that death was just an option.”
Favorite character: Ghosh – what a great guy, best father and husband and doctor in the world, humble and loving.
Very, very interesting story! Loved it!