Welcome to Litsy!

Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward.

A apt title, I really enjoyed the play on words. Cutting For Stone is part of the hypocritic oath. If you cannot handle health/surgery talk this is not for you. Verghese pulls a lot from himself - he is an Ethiopian -American doctor. His MCs are Ethiopian twins born of doctors who become doctors. The background of the Ethiopian revolution. I was a bit nervous about this but it was very readable, the characters are vivid and the pacing is perfect.

"The hospital 's old septic tank was located here, deep underground, and for years it has overflowed before it was taken out of use. USAID concrete, Rockefeller funds, and a Greek contractor named Achilles had built a new one "

Try as I might this will not be the book that doesn't remind me how far America has fallen. To be reminded that we used to help the poorest of the poor across the globe ?

#25in25 we are halfway through the year and I am doing not as great as I could have hoped on the 25 books I have chosen to focus on in 2025.

I feel like July and August are going to be my time to shine on this! A perfect time to read Anne of Green Gables, Three, A Trace of Sun, all those lovely summer books.

I grabbed the audio of Cutting for Stone from my Library so will dive into that this month.

Current count 11/25

I adored this novel set in 1962 fictional Faha (west Ireland). Gorgeous, real characters and infused with a sense of place & feeling of being in a rainy small town. A gentle pace but drama on every page as the characters engage with each other, make choices & battle with their conscience. Most of all the writing is sublime, the sentences finely turned but unshowy, with an Irish warmth & sensibility. I loved the deadpan humour too. A beautiful book

“Stories on an island travel sideways”….. something to that effect. 💚

Perfect description of this intimately detailed portrait of a doctor, his daughter, and their village during the Christmas season of 1962. Something unexpectedly upends the doctor‘s guarded privacy and equilibrium.

Simply gorgeous prose with quotable gems every page. I enjoyed This is Happiness, but I loved this one.

I‘m a big fan of Williams- of how he describes daily life expertly and beautifully, and he does the same in this novel. I felt it moved too slow (even though I like that about his writing). The plot was interesting at times, but didn‘t hit with the same punch that others had. Good, but not great.

Today‘s find in Belgrade: the Serbian edition of “Cutting for Stone.”

As long as you go into this knowing that you‘ll have to slow your reading way down, you‘ll be fine. Williams‘ writing is dense & beautiful, with descriptions that bring you so close to the reality of the person, place & thing that you‘ll come out of the story feeling as if you were there. The child in question doesn‘t appear until halfway through the story and by then you‘ve become thoroughly acquainted with the characters of Faha & their lives.

Just loved this book. It took me a while to get into it but so glad I kept going. By the time the story unfolded I had a good handle on the main characters. I had to really concentrate at times on his beautiful writing. Good tears at the end for me. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐