Cutting for Stone question

Thanks for referring to "missing". I hadn't noticed that and it's important in the understanding of the book. I loved this book!

I thought the main storyline with the main characters was OK.
However this book just went off on too many tangents for me and had long passages of needlessly descriptive writing about topics and people totally unrelated to the story.
I'm in the medical profession so I had no problem with understanding the language, but OMG the level of detail, the description of every bone and artery and every type of forcep and stitch almost did me in.
I started skipping paragraphs, then pages then finally chapters.

There was also way too much writing about male genitals, that whole scene with Hema on the plane was just beyond strange.

I was *thisclose* to not finishing the book, the birth & hysterectomy was so ridiculously protracted and with so much detail, and with such incompetent doctors and nurses standing around doing nothing - I contemplated removing my own uterus out of boredom.

Basically I was bored and I skipped large chunks of the book because of that. This book needed a good editor with a big fat red pen and at least half of the over indulgent writing needed to go.

Book needed editing; there were some ridiculous mistakes and the book could have been reduced by 100+ pages.

I loved this book. I liked the characters very much. We read this in my book group last October. The medical terms and scenes I believe were important for the story as a whole, and thank you Patricia for pointing out the word "missing". It is an important word.

I loved this book. Beautifully written, a very moving, raw and great story! Sure, there were medical terms I didn't understand but inferred what it meant from the narrative. Not understanding the medical terms didn't make the story any less appealing.
Most of all, I find, it's the story of a human condition (good and bad) told through time. the interaction between the characters and the dialogue was absolutely beautiful. I liked the dialogue – between the father and the son, the sorrow of the father in admitting his guilt, the row emotion that comes out on both sides gives the story depth.

I enjoyed it and unlike many books which color coat life in developing areas this book laid it out. Often in fiction the ending is predictable...this was a true surprise.

Not reading the book, would have been a tragedy for me.
I enjoyed the story and the characters as developed in the book.

I liked this book very much - enough to seek out and read his earlier non-fiction, My Own Country, a Doctor's Story. One of the things I liked so much in Cutting for Stone was the insight it provided into how a foreign trained doctor experiences the United States' medical system. So many of our doctors are foreign born or the children of recent immigrants, but this is not often spoken about.

I liked the book enough to finish it, but I found large chunks of it boring. The one thing I really enjoyed was learning some of the history of Ethiopia (I know it was fiction and some events were changed, but I knew almost none of it, and I am "well-educated" in the American sense.)

This book is on my top 10 list. I loved the characters, the setting, the medical stuff, the bit mystery. My sister couldn't get interested in it! Everybody's different.