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Mia Queiroz _ia_ueiroz — This is an excellent, absorbing book that is as near perfect a novel that I've read in many years! I was sorry to finish it, & miss the characters. I just read a couple of reviews by people who were bored by the book or stalled in the middle wondering if it was worth finishing. Everyone is entitled to their viewpoint of course, and I've read the first 50 (my limit) pages of some classics or best-sellers only to throw them across the room. However, I was surprised by the negative comments on this book. So, I thought I'd add a bit more of what I liked and why I liked it. However, chances are, if you've reached page 50 or 100 and aren't hooked, it probably isn't the book for you. I found this book to be the absorbing tale of two identical twin boys born "out of wedlock;" their father a brilliant surgeon and their mother a surgical nurse and nun. They are adopted by a woman Indian gynecologist who works at the small hospital that their parents worked at. I had the impression that the hospital was part of a chapel compound--hospital, nursing quarters, church and staff living quarters all within the gates of the compound in their town in Ethiopia. The twins' mother dies in childbirth in a series of mishaps I found completely believable and true of the characters involved. Their father, a "detached" (to put it mildly), socially awkward, alcoholic, but brilliant surgeon is so overcome by the death of the boys' mother that he takes off, eventually finding his way to America, but it would be a bit of a spoiler to let you know what happens to him. The boy who tells the story is the thoughtful brother, who aches to know about his origins and his mysterious mother. There are three children in the compound: the twins, and Genet, their near-sister--unfortunately, not near enough. Genet is the daughter of an aide to a revolutionary leader and the compound's cook. The aide is married, so Genet does not see her father often. Since the cook lives on the compound, Genet grows up with the boys. I won't reveal what happens to Genet's parents, but suffice it to say that I found those events to be explanatory about how Genet changes. That kind of trauma would do that to anyone, practically. I am a doctor, and was raised a Catholic, and so found the medical details accurate to time and place. We tend to forget in this era of amazing medical miracles what medicine was like in the 50's and even the 60's before C-T scans, or even the widespread availability of antibiotics. The hospital reminded me of a Methodist (?) hospital in the city that I grew up in where my younger sister was a pediatric patient in the early sixties--she was there for months (pre-managed care obviously) and the hospital was like a not-so-large family--a comforting and warm place to hang out with my sister while we waited to find out what she had and if she was going to die. It was very different from the cold, "business-oriented", "managed" entities of today. It is perhaps hard for some readers to believe that doctors and nurses used to be (and of course, some still are) extremely dedicated people who saw their professions as vocations--even if they weren't religious. It was not uncommon for doctors of previous generations to live in hospitals (after their training) or close by and to hang around them altogether too much--at least if one considers the effect on their families. I have a friend whose gynecologist father had a room at the hospital where he stayed if he had any patients close to delivery, so he was on site at any time when labor started. She didn't see much of her father! By the way, I don't think this is necessarily a healthy thing when carried to extremes, but having dealt with way too many "administrators" at this point, I have to wonder if some of the features of the old ways of practicing medicine weren't superior. The advantages of the compound was the doctors' family was part of the whole thing too. If I say much more, this will turn into a spoiler. However, I will say that, unsurprisingly, Abraham Verghese captured the essence of doctors very well. We're a strange bunch, even when we aren't surgeons. And he captured the surgical types perfectly, in my opinion. I did a year of anesthesia training before I changed my mind and did something else. I "passed gas" for Thomas Starzl, the transplant surgeon who is in part the model for the boys' father. Starzl was a brilliant surgeon, and revolutionized liver and kidney transplants, but he was a bit, well, odd, and socially awkward. Of a morning, one could see him cheerily biking to the hospital--(at around 5:30 am). He was always polite and decent to me and never threw things or ranted and raved--unlike most surgeons. Even before Verghese mentions Starzl, I wondered if he had known him and had used him as the model for his character. Apparently so. So, hang in there if you have any interest at all left, because I really do count this among some of the best books I have ever read. So, I found the hospital compound completely believable, as well as the nurses' quarters and the dedication of the religious nurses. The compare/contrast of the cozy if not state-of-the-art Ethiopian hospital with the super-duper modern hospital of Boston in which the narrator finds himself is right on the money--or lack of money, I should say.