Cutting for Stone (2009) by Abraham Verghese  Critical Evaluation “But all the rich detail in the world is as nothing if you don't have command of emotion and narrative. One could argue, given everything from ER to House, that medicine cannot help but be dramatic, but that isn't necessarily true: Verghese's achievement is to make the reader feel there really is something at stake - birth, love, death, war, loyalty. There's no smug postmodern self-undermining (otherwise known as irony) here: the mythic arises seamlessly from the quotidian; telepathy or saintly intercessions are simply accepted - as they often are in Ethiopian [...]