The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Cover via Goodreads.

Rating: 4/5 stars.

How ironic that I would read The Poisonwood Bible immediately after publishing a blog post defending the merits of YA books. One individual commented about how literary fiction takes themes/motifs/messages and pushes them to the edge. I can see that with Barbara Kingsolver’s work.

Yes, the book preaches about anti-Westernization and the plights of religion.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Cover via read-irresponsibly.com.

Rating: 3/5 stars.

To write a book like Cutting for Stone requires a lot of ambition. It’s a novel that travels over three different continents, details a countless amount of medical procedures, and includes manifold themes, such as: the importance of family, love vs. lust, patriotism, forgiveness in the face of betrayal, etc.. It it were a poem, it could be considered an epic.

Unfortunately, the verbose writing style of Verghese stole the essence of the story. I can clearly see how phenomenal this book would have been if it had been shortened by about 100-200 pages. There were some magical moments that shone through, only to be ensconced by an inundation of unnecessary sentences, paragraphs, and even pages. I grew tired of this book and after completing it was glad to move on to something else.

The gratuitous descriptions detracted from my enjoyment of the story, but I would definitely recommended it to people who are doctors or those who have prior knowledge of medicine and surgery.