Wow, guys. This was such a peach. All the reviews I read of call it “riveting,” “enthralling,” “epic,” and “The Kite Runner of the year.” And I like riveting, enthralling, epic novels and I did like The Kite Runner, so this had to be a winner! (Insert wince here.) So I just have to tell you about how fascinating it was. I mean, it just had SOOOO many topics to bring up, you know?

It’s a story about, hmm, let me think of a couple of those topics, shall I? (Insert facetious wink here.) Cutting for Stone is about:

Pregnant nuns. Runaway surgeons/fathers (maybe). Conjoined twins. Bastard children. Orphaned children. Typhoid. Shipboard quarantines. A guy who has no ribs to protect his heart and internal organs. Monsoons. Planes that almost crash at sea. Doctors who, though previously unintroduced, grab the ball sacks of drunken pilots. Rape and/or menstrual stigmata. Civil wars in Africa. Nuns who become nurses but don’t like being celibate and have no Sound Nursing Sense and thus seduce little boys due to guilt. Burial at sea. That little red dot Indian women wear on their foreheads. How to pronounce Ethiopia if you are a native. C-sections. Syphilis. Boys named after Indian gods. Boys named old-fashioned girl’s names. (Insert grumbling aside here.)

And…it is also about: Vasectomies, in full medical, step-by-step fashion. Sewage bogs that swallow dogs, cows, and dead bodies. Tinkling ankle bracelets that keep people alive. Tinkling ankle bracelets that help people dance. Tinkling ankle bracelets torn off in anger. Dogs named Koochooloo. Unnamed dogs. Dog quotas. Puppies who suck exhaust pipes. Puppies who are drowned. Royal Chihuahuas. Bloody coups (rumored & fake). Bloodless coups (real & that end up, guess what, really bloody). Multiple hangings. Misinterpreted gravestones. Selective mutism. Treason. Babies who die of rickets. Babies who die of croup. Creepy priests who run around chanting in turbans and ride on the running boards of trucks. (Insert hands-clamping-over-throat and requisite gagging noise here.)

And…you will also find: MANY characters with various medical afflictions and those who care for them. An emperor who is overthrown by his son, the crown prince. Or not, since he was probably just doing it at gunpoint. Rural African hospitals. Doctors who decide they are surgeons but have never been trained to do surgery. Untrained children who assist in the aforementioned surgeries. Fancy motorcycles that are given to personal assistants of the Imperial Bodyguard. Fancy motorcycles that get hidden in garages and then stolen by creepy runaway rebels hiding guns. Rebels who allow little boys to push them on fancy motorcycles to their deaths. Rebels who maybe weren’t dead after flipping off fancy motorcycles over ravines but then somehow accidentally end up with pistols stuck in their ribcages that accidentally go off when little boys, who were previously trying to kill said rebels, shoot them in the stomach. Little boys, and those who love them, who end up lying about killing runaway rebels and depositing them in sewage bogs. (Insert eye-gouging here.)

And…we can’t forget: Women who get teeth smacked out of their faces but no one ever asks why their smile is now so messed up. Unexplained prison sentences for pseudo-surgeons. Lots of bowel obstructions that occur routinely because Ethiopian bowels apparently collapse upon themselves at random. Creepy girls who urinate on boys as punishment and/or sexual initiation. Brides who opt for one year, rather than lifetime, marriage agreements that are renewable, of course. (Insert “This book reminds me of The House of Sand and Fog AKA Michelle-and-Kelley’s-Yardstick-for-Worst-Book-Ever Read” comment here.)

And that’s just in the first HALF, ya’ll. OMG, I just love this book soooo much. I can’t wait to keep reading. Forgive me if I just get so interested that I forget, ahem, to update you on all the new topics sure to crop up in the second half. (Insert “This is one of the few books I will set aside without finishing” comment here.)