Verghese can write. His writing is beautiful. While I love family sagas, the book is massive, and I probably wouldn't have stuck with it in the hands of a less skilled writer.
Several plotlines are woven together. One is that of a young girl who enters into an arranged marriage to a much older man--and then her long life, and that of her family, friends, and others in her life. Another plot line relates to a Scottish doctor who comes to India to develop his skills as a surgeon, after being unable to secure a postgraduate surgical in Scotland. Still another plot is that of how generations of the family the girl marries into suffer a strange malady: every generation at least one person dies of drowning. All these lines, and more, are deftly interwoven, over the course of many chapters and pages.
I love the characters, the words, the story (although a bit complicated at times). My biggest problem was the use of Indian words and idioms (I think there isn't an "Indian" language--I think the words in the book were Malayalam), and the sheer number of characters, many of whose names seemed similar to me.
It takes a time commitment to read, but I think it is worth it. ( )

I'm very ambivalent about this novel. It is a generational saga that I feel has great potential. There are some great mini-stories contained within. However, it is meandering and overly long. There are 1-2 chapters which are of great interest and I was getting invested in the story, when the next two chapters introduced a new character in a new setting and we don't get back to the original story for 200 more pages. Disjointed, but at times brilliantly engaging. 727 pages ( )

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Veghese, has touched my soul.
I read this novel from sunrise to midnight over multiple days. The author’s cadence of storytelling pulled me (the reader) along through generations of a family saga. The writing is so beautiful with literary passages artistically threaded together in unexpected ways.

The Covenant of Water is in a different league, and for anyone harboring aspirations of authorship, it will humble you and remind you that there are many levels to writing, and there are certain levels that are simply unobtainable for all but a few. It's the type of book that illustrates an author operating at the apex of his craft, where all of his skills around writing, planning, dialogue, structure, and research come together to create something beautiful. Go in with eyes wide open -- -- but trust that the payoff at the end is worth the journey.

There is a passage in the book in which Verghese writes the following:
"And now (she) is here, standing in the water that connects them all in time and space and always has. The water she first stepped in minutes ago is long gone and yet it is here, past and present and future inexorably coupled, like time made incarnate. This is the covenant of water: that they're all linked by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone."

One reviewer wrote:
714 pages, The Covenant of Water, is a commitment. It's long, it's dense, it's heartbreaking more often than it's not, has humor, and with every new character introduced, I found myself wondering where are the stories going and how it might end. But it's also beautifully rendered, meticulously researched, and a tour de force.

The novel spans almost 80 years and takes place primarily in southern India. The story opens in 1900 with the arranged wedding of a 12-year-old girl to a much older man. Following their strained and awkward nuptials, he brings her to his home called Parambil, around which a community has developed. As she begins to learn how to be a wife to her husband, and the awkwardness between them begins to thaw as she grows older, she also comes to learn of her husband's genealogy, and the repeated tragedy that afflicted many of his ancestors. The girl -- who by now has become a young woman and is known as "Big Ammachi" -- comes to refer to it as The Condition, whereby an unnatural number of ancestors in her husband's lineage have had an aversion to water and several have died in what would typically be avoidable circumstances involving water.
While The Condition crops up as a through line over the course the novel, the book is less about that mysterious affliction than it is a multi-generational character study of a family and the people who move in their circles. The novel flows like a river, with detailed scenes and character development intertwining. The reader, meanwhile, is left to be carried along like an oarless boat upon that river. I will admit that I got frustrated at times with the book. Even by the halfway point, it felt like plenty of story had been told and it was time to wrap things up, yet nearly 400 additional pages still awaited me. What more needs to be told? How will this end?
Shame on me for doubting Verghese or his intentions, and for presuming these seemingly disconnected passages wouldn't eventually find one another to complete the puzzle. While I was being carried along the river, Verghese was weaving a complex tapestry around me. Every character and story in the meandering novel had a purpose, and all of that intention is pulled together and made clear during the final 150 (or so) pages. Verghese honors the passage above, and like the water he references, he beautifully ties together the strands of his story. ( )

This book is set in India, and follows the interconnected stories of one particular family over several generations, and a Scottish doctor who comes to practice medicine in India and his friends and colleagues. The family is plagued by a weird curse: they are prone to drowning. This seems like it must be superstition, but a few people in the family devote their lives to understanding this malady and the medical reasons behind it.

Verghese is a doctor, and like his previous novel, this book is full of very detailed descriptions of surgeries, medical procedures, and medical problems. Normally I would find this tedious, but Verghese has such a clear passion for medicine that comes through in his writing, which makes the reader also care deeply about the intricacies of medical procedures and the thrill of understanding and solving medical problems.

There are a lot of characters in the book, and all of them have vivid and distinct personalities. They are all, at heart, good people who genuinely care about each other, even if some of them mess up sometimes. It is heartwarning to read about these people.

Verghese manages to pull a lot of disparate threads together into a coherent whole, and to create a lot of mysteries, medical and personal, with satisfying conclusions. ( )

Couldn't finish. Well written, but wouldn't hold my interest. I gave up halfway. ( )