The Covenant of Water

I never write book reviews. Until now. My house is a wreck. Let me explain: I just read two Abraham Verghese books back to back in a week. If you know that author, you understand why I’ve accomplished little else. I just finished his latest, his magnum opus, The Covenant of Water. I had a love-hate relationship with this grand novel. The 765 pages required a big commitment but since I am a voracious reader, that wasn’t a problem. The love part was because of Verghese’s outstanding writing. His characters and settings practically jump off the pages. And thanks to the authors everyday occupation as a physician, I now know more about anatomy than I need or want to know! The writing evokes a curiosity that leads to Googling maps of India and researching Indian dissident groups and even looking up the bones of the body. At one point I was ready to book a flight to India. This was getting dangerous. The hate part relates to the same thing: you fall in love with one character and the author moves on to another seemingly unrelated one. Wait, you cry. Don’t stop there! Well, be patient dear reader. All is not lost or even what it seems. The story is one of things lost and found, of overcoming suffering and moving on with life - themes most of us can relate to in some way. The shifts in time and place and characters caused some confusion, especially when I was listening to the audiobook. This is a book you need to read - I mean really read and pay attention. It is not an easy read: more than once I found myself wondering what the heck that has to do with where this is going. But, true to form, Verghese wraps it up neatly in the last 100 pages. He does go around Robin Hood’s barn to get there, but in the end it is a very satisfying conclusion: one that earns it ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ on my book list and one of my top five for the year. His previous novel, Cutting for Stone, tops my list for the year. This one was close for that honor. And it was worth the journey.

‘“We’re so blessed, aren’t we?” She marvels that a man who has suffered so much can feel this way.’ (p624) This is a tale of a large, extended family along with the villagers and outsiders who touch their lives. It spans almost eighty years, most of which encompass the lifetime of the matriarch who is the rock supporting and sustaining everyone around her. Hardship, fear, and sadness mix with joy and wonder; grief, anger, and despair collide with hope, faith, and resolve. Mistakes, misfortune, and egregious conduct result in unspeakable tragedies. So yes – in many ways the characters’ lives are difficult, and there are portions of the book that have a decidedly dark, bitter tone. But this novel has a beauty that defies description. The prose and the story soar. Expect plenty of multi-layered mysteries and surprises, several unforgettable characters, and deep, sometimes searing commentary on many important matters: colonialism; the caste system; gender roles and differences; uprisings and revolutions; assault; disabilities. The author also delivers thoughtful insights regarding family, our obligations to others, and what it means to experience a full life well lived. In my view, however, his most important message is a compelling challenge to all of us: if you want to change the world, roll up your sleeves and change your neighborhood.

A friend (not Oprah!) recommended the book to me. Overall, I was captivated by the writing style and the flow. At 700+ pages, you know it's a long book, so I don't understand the people who reviewed it saying "it was too long". When you cover 77 years of time, you except something of length and depth. Detail is important as the stories do intertwine. Verghese does a good job of incorporating medical, cultural, religious and political points and etail into the book. The use of some Indian phrases that repeat and become a reference point is easy enough to navigate and helped me hold on to details chapters down the road. For me, it was a fast-ish read. Usually 100 pages per sitting. I did put the book down for a day or so at the end of chapter 46. In the first 46, there is marriage, disease, death, famine, etc, but it was a simple enough sounding request that automatically gave me pause. Whether the author framed it that way for a reader reaction, or it was just my own, it felt heavy. Inadvertently, it would become heavy. IF I have a criticism of the book it is closer to the end. Digby, a character, condenses part of the book into a a page or two, trying to tie up things and literally helping the reader along by helping them remember plot points like it is some Cliff Notes version. Maybe I retain things better, but it annoyed me. The other being that there is a possibility that a father MIGHT have been going to Madras to find someone he thought long dead. Even for all else that has gone on, THAT supposition would be a huge stretch - and highly accurate for a lot of unknowns to the character. Still, I liked the book. I liked the author and his style. I don't care if Oprah liked it or not. I'd rather not have her name on the cover, but what are you gonna do?

This is the masterpiece of Verghese's fabulous books, which elucidate the practice of medicine, the acute diagnostic skill and cross-cultural awareness, the recognition of the social determinants of health and suffering, illness, infectious disease, and intergenerational issues of people with diseases which have familial roots tangled into them. Each of his books is worth reading, deeply satisfying, and good at giving us deeper awareness and grasp of the role and capability of a good doctor. I have read it twice, in order to get to the tiny details I may have ignored in my desire to get the whole story. It is exquisite. The compassion, the humor, the curiosity, the depth of character development, are all a wonderful part of his ability to write this tremendous book.

This story covering generations has enthralled me from beginning to the very final pages. Any woman who has not read this, has missed out on a real treasure. The richness of the language and the depth of the story pulls you into its pages. Simply beautiful. Now please a movie 🙏🏼. Thanking you, Dr Verghese, for this masterpiece.

Very good book, set in India. Bought it for my husband's birthday. He has just finished all 758 pages and found it compelling reading.

Nice story. As usual with Verghese, there are lots of extensive surgical descriptions which don't really serve the narrative. At some points the story gets a bit sugary, but on the whole a beautiful book.

Nothing is as good as a story well told, combining family secrets, romance, spiritual wisdom and tragedy of a family in the Indian state of Kerala. Spanning three generations Abraham Verghese takes the reader on a fascinating and colorful journey. The author is a master wordsmith, and it becomes apparent why he spent more than a decade sculpturing this masterpiece. There are so many words of wisdom put into the mouths of the protagonists. Some examples: "Success is not money! Success is fully loving what you are doing. That only is success!" or "Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!" ..."What defines a family isn't blood but the secrets they share. Secrets that can bind them together or bring them to their knees when revealed." A passage that really stands out: "In the next instant, she looks right through him, just as for years she looked through that plavu, pretended that its ugliness wasn't there and that her view was unobstructed. At that moment she has made him vanish, wiped him off her canvas so that what's left is a smeared surface that holds the false lines, the figure that did not come out right, the erroneous strokes of a marriage, and world botched beyond repair ..."

The Covenant of Water. Book Review: Reading Abraham Verghese's novel The Covenant of Water, the million-copy bestseller included in Oprah’s Book Club 2023 and published by Grove Press in the UK, has been an astounding experience for me for the last twelve days. The author took twelve years to write his magnum opus. The book explores the themes of love, compassion, empathy, human relationships, and commitment to a cause encircled by superstitions, fear, ignorance, slavery, detachment, spirituality, suffering, secrecy, and profound silence. While reading, the novel transported me to an unknown and known world: Kerala, which flows like the totality of all its thirty-six rivers, the serene plentiful lagoons, numerous backwaters and thousands of ponds adjacent to old houses, carrying its diverse smells, sounds, tastes, sights, touch, history, the struggle for equality, freedom, women’s liberation, literacy advancement, the health revolution, communist movement, Christianity’s involvement in education and social upliftment, the majesty of the temples, the culture, arts, and enlightenment through science and atheism. The novel is enriched with everlasting greenery, Malayali splendour, the humanness of the public, and equity visible everywhere. The book weaves the story of three generations of a family, the St Thomas Christians, from 1900 to 1977, in Travancore, Kerala. It starts with a twelve-year-old girl going to wed a forty-year-old widower whom she would meet for the first time in church during the wedding. The girl’s father, a priest, died years before, and her mother struggled to provide a life for her loving daughter. The groom was rich, having five hundred acres of land as the solace. The girl travelled alone with the broker to an unknown place by boat. The groom walked out of the church, seeing his would-be wife as she was still a child, slightly older than his motherless son. The priest, the wedding celebrant, had a hard time convincing the groom to accept the girl as his wife by tying the tiny thali around her neck, as St Thomas Christians continued to follow the traditions of the Brahmins. In her affectionate yet introverted, kind and wise husband's home, the twelve-year-old girl transformed into a compassionate, caring, lively, and wise matriarch whom others called Big Ammachi. She witnessed and brought far-reaching changes around her throughout her astonishing life span, which was compressed with happiness, hardships, deaths, pain, and sublimation. It is an absorbing, engrossing, spectacular novel full of humane touch, soft feelings and empathy. The starting is one of the best: “She was twelve years old, and she will be married in the morning. Mother and daughter lie on the mat, their wet cheeks glued together.” “The saddest day of a girl’s life is the day of her wedding,” her mother says. “After that, God willing, it gets better.” The universal truth stuns the reader and leads them to read further without interruption until the last page of this 715-page saga, witnessing the gradual transformation of the characters, the evolution of the story and the metamorphosis of the enriching philosophy beneath the theme. The characterisation of the main characters, Big Ammachi and her husband, their manager Shamuel, their son and daughter JoJo, Baby Mol, and Philipose, their son Ninan, Shamuel’s son Joppan, Rune, Digby, and Mariamma, is well developed, consistent, contrasting, and profound in terms of the themes of the novel. It vibrates with spontaneity and inner strength. More than anything, the novel is a perceptive and rigorous analysis of the complexities of the social system. A significant narrative is a struggle to interpret social customs, traditions, faith, religion, political affiliation, and a categorical value system, such as treating the Dalits as untouchables, in fact, slaves. “Because you loved my father, this is harder for you to grasp…You see yourself as being kind and generous to him. The “kind” slave owners in India, or anywhere, were always the ones who had the greatest difficulty seeing the injustice of slavery. Their kindness, their generosity, compared to cruel slave owners, made them blend to the unfairness of a system of slavery that they created, they maintained, and that favoured them.” The language is simple yet powerful, appropriate but timely, situational, elegant, and mesmerising, such as: “Below him, the tea bushes run in neat, parallel rows as though a giant comb has been dragged across the hillside.” Some of the ethereal and magical scenes in verisimilitude contexts suggest the serendipity and meaninglessness of life and, at the same time, its profound purpose, even the merging of contradictions. The deaths of JoJo and Ninan bring such a notion. Mariamma meeting her biological father and juxtaposing her palms against her mother, who she thought dead, is the most poignant scene in the story. The Covenant of Water is one of the greatest novels I have ever read. I cherished reading each word and each sentence on every page of this magnificent work. The joy I derived from it is unparalleled. It is a stupendous tribute to Kerala, its people and culture, language and courage, openness, vitality and diversity, soul-satiating greenery, gorgeousness, stillness, and enlightened living, respecting the right of the other person to cherish their rights. As a literary landmark, an epic tribute to the living and dead in God’s Own Country, The Covenant of Water shines like a bright star on the syzygy of English literature. I compare The Covenant of Watter with One Hundred Years of Solitude, Things Fall Apart, Brothers Karamazov, For Whom The Bell Tolls, The Remains of the Day and Valli, Sheela Tomy’s Malayalam novel, beautifully and elegantly translated into English by Jayasree Kalathil. Dr Abraham Verghese is the Vice Chair of the Department of Medicine at Standford University School of Medicine and the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone, which has sold more than one and a half million copies. Varghese V Devasia Kozhikode 27 January 2025.