Is 'Cutting For Stone' Based On A True Story?

This title is about cost. Cutting for stone, which used to kill patients in droves, was a last resort, a desperate action taken in the greatest turmoil, for the greatest of loves. The exorbitant cost of the actions this novel portraits, loving a sibling, pursuing a life’s work, surviving against incredible odds to become what you want to be, all have to do with amputating limbs of the soul. The title itself is expensive sounding. It conveys a sense of great weight, of irrevocable action, and of extreme danger. As a historical term it conveys the sense of vast risk that this novel is about to explore in depth: transactions in which life, love, and sanity are the currency. Nothing is free in this novel, and every cut, every intervention has a cost which is paid years later.

It’s a work of fiction. So what? What’s striking is that this highly orchestrated novel uses realism to structure a number of crucial scenes. Long stretches of reverently detailed evidence analysis create a sense of rhythm that makes the few bursts of action or revelation all the more effective. A true story would be driven by accidents. Deaver has here orchestrating a series of carefully constructed scenes to the ultimate peak of tension. What he has written is not a report. It is a work of art. The detailed research serves as the raw notes for the story. How you trust the information about the phosphorescent remains or about the taxonomy of a certain beetle is separate from how you trust the author with the “feel” or “pulse” of the overall story.

I randomly picked ‘A Country Christmas Story’ a few days ago to watch on a lazy December afternoon and immediately fell in love with it. Although ‘A Country Christmas Story’ is not based on a true story, you can easily imagine it was. Most of all, the very real characters will probably make you wonder who they are based on. There’s the awkward homecoming of the heroine and her ex-high school boyfriend. And how the whole town comes together for the annual Christmas play. It is true that the movie did an excellent job of portraying the lives of many people and bringing out the love and humor between them. It was a wonderful movie in the sense that it portrayed the true life of many people. It is an excellent example of a movie that stays with you long after it has ended. Even though it is not a true story it could have been and that is what makes it such a great film.

I have not read any true stories of children in detention camps but Zara Fraillon has written a brilliant novel about a boy, Subhi, who is living in an Australian immigration camp with his mother and brother. While Subhi’s experiences are not ‘true’ his life in the detention camp is vividly portrayed and his plight evokes emotions and anger at the injustices he suffers. His friendship with Jimmie, an outsider, brings hope into Subhi’s life and while a work of fiction, the book draws on many real life stories of children in detention camps around the world and of the experiences of many refugees. The Bone Sparrow brings to life the plight of many children living in the worst of circumstances. So often children are depicted as fragile and weak; Fraillon has gone to so much trouble to portray a child strong in the face of horror. His friendship with the wild boy Jimmie is also very real and authentic. Of course the two characters are fictional but the situations in which they find themselves are not and often go unreported. I am thinking of the current Rohingya crisis as well as reports from Nauru of children in detention. The title of this wonderful book, The Bone Sparrow, is also a real term used to describe a particular stage in the development of a bird’s wing. A bone so fragile yet crucial to the bird’s flight in the future. That is how I feel Fraillon has portrayed child refugees – so fragile yet determined to survive against all odds. This book is a love letter to the voices of refugee children that have not been heard yet, written in a way that is accessible to a middle grade reader but in no way sugars the horror of what is happening to these children.

'Thornhill' isn’t nonfiction but is grounded in the real emotions of hardship and suffering. Written as a graphic novel that alternates between half-page blocks of prose and half-page blocks of wordless images, it has the feel of a documentary or of a trial where evidence is being pieced together. Although the story of Mary and her family in the 1980s is entirely fictional, her isolation mirrors many documented cases of neglect by institutions. The silences in the book are perhaps the most striking. Many pages consist only of shadows and body language to reveal extreme abuse. It is powerful and makes one think of the many real victims of abuse whose stories have gone untold. That this is the core of the book and not just a tag line of “based on real events” is what will linger long after finishing the book.

This is a work of fiction, but written by someone who works in a related field. They have played out a fictional scenario to explore the difficulties of a dysfunctional therapeutic relationship, the prospect of manipulation within such a power imbalanced situation and then how this can be worst case scenario’d for a thriller. But the core of what has been written is rooted in serious ethical consideration of the immense vulnerability of a patient in therapy and the ways in which even the most well intentioned of therapists can fail in serious ways. So yes, this feels true.

There is beauty in ambiguity. And this setup is ambiguous. It doesn’t specify whether the characters are male or female. And it doesn’t specify whether they are from some past era or not. So it’s very versatile. You can match up just about any two characters from any story, or you can match up historical figures. The audience can then use their imagination to figure out what happens next. Is it a true story? It can be as many true stories as you want to make it. The setup is a simple template that is empty until someone fills it in with the two characters that they ship or find interesting. The power of the setup is the empty space of the template.

What struck me so forcefully in this movie was the portrayal of the older sister, Vianne. Her story, that of reluctant quiet resistance to store up to protect children, to negotiate with the enemy within the walls of her home, was not depicted as that of a heroine of a war movie, all action, all bloodshed and heroics. Her story felt true to me. It is the true story of so much daily, positive, human-heroic action which remains hidden and is most often neglected by historians. Was there a Vianne? No, not under that name. But were there thousands of women all doing exactly the same sort of thing? Yes, there were. Her story could be the truest of them all and yet it remains largely a forgotten story. This novel is a rescue of that kind of experience.

I remembered that some movies had left a deep mark on me and that “The Edge of America” is not a documentary, even if it treats some real issues like the education gap in some parts of the country, the cultural pride and the role that sports can play to bring people together. Its characters are very believable and real, you can even imagine you meet them some day. The movie is very quiet but very powerful. There are no dramatic dialogues, it’s just very natural and real.

I read this book during a very low period in my life when I was questioning almost everything including God. A part of me sort of wanted it to be true because then it would have been more of a direct sign or something. I was somewhat disappointed when I found out that it was a work of fiction, but then I had a minor crisis of faith. Not of God, but of the book. The book had given me so much comfort and I had thought that it was true because of all the comfort that it gave me. But I eventually realized that the comfort that I had received from this book was real. The story is just a story meant to evoke thought and to give a perspective on healing. Its status as fact or fiction is not important. Read the book for what it is.