Believe it or not, I’m in the middle of two more books that are really good. Tony Hillerman’s SkinWalkers (may he rest in peace) and Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone. The latter is 560 pages, so “luckily” I have the flu and a three-day weekend to just curl up and read.
Here’s the scoop:
Publisher’s Weekly writes,
“Vibrant with the spirit of the Navajo people of the Southwest,
Hillerman’s new [not new to 2009] story is a spellbinder, like his Edgar Winner Dance
Hall of the Dead and other praised novels. Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee of
the tribal police work together here, trying to solve crimes that
resist logic. There are no clues to three homicides or to the attempted
murder of Chee. Leaphorn thinks a “skinwalker,” or witch, could have
attacked the victims, all adherents of shamanism, as they are otherwise
unrelated. The skinwalkers represent a schism between witchcraft and
the traditional Navajo Way. A second attempt on Chee bolsters
Leaphorn’s suspicion since Chee is an aspiring shaman. The story
gathers momentum and tension as the partners get closer to the moment
when the murderer comes into the open, and the tragic reason for the
crimes becomes painfully clear.”
Publisher’s Weekly writes,
“Lauded for his sensitive memoir (My Own Country) about his time
as a doctor in eastern Tennessee at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in
the 80s, Verghese turns his formidable talents to fiction, mining his
own life and experiences in a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves
from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over
decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun,
leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post
in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an
English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key
player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in
Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys:
Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brothers long,
dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil
in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up
and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing.
The boys become doctors as well and Vergheses weaving of the practice
of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs
and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century
novel.”
Comments on this entry are closed.