The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese, author and narrator When I finished this book, I was of two minds. One was relief, because after 31 hours of the audio, I could not believe it had ended. The other was disappointment that it was over. I wanted it to go on and on. It was one of the best books I have read in a long time and the author read it with aplomb. Beginning in the early 1900’s, the reader is taken to a remote village in India called Parambil, and is introduced to the marriage of a young girl, not quite a teenager. She is being married off to a man who is almost three decades older, but she is supposed to be happy about the fortuitous match. Big Appachen, as he is called, is a widower. His first wife has died and his two-year-old child needs a mother. Thus, he needs another bride. He cannot believe that his sister arranged such a marriage, with someone who is just a child herself, but she convinces him to go through with it. Although he is kind to his new bride, he keeps his distance for many years. Still, this child, Mariamma, becomes a wonderful mother to his son Jo Jo, and eventually, she becomes a wonderful wife, as well. Jo Jo is terrified of water, a sure sign of the secret affliction the family carries. Will he suffer the consequences, as does someone in every generation? As time passes, Mariamma bears her own child, Baby Mol. She will never grow up mentally, for she is a victim of cretinism. When Mariamma was pregnant, she experienced excruciating premature contractions. She was taken to a Scotsman, Dr. Digby Kildour, a compassionate and skilled surgeon. He advised her that her body is just preparing for the birth of the child and does not alter the course of her pregnancy. It was at that time that Elsie, whose father was driving Dr. Kildour, meets him for the first time. A discussion about their hands ensues. It is a foreshadowing of many events to come. Miriamma eventually has a second child who seems quite healthy. Big Appachen insists that the boy, Phillipose, be permitted to climb, run and live, in the way that Big Appachen, as a boy, was forbidden to live. Phillipose is the hero of the community as he is bright and qualifies for an advanced education. Unfortunately, he has a hearing loss and is forced to discontinue his studies. He becomes a journalist instead, writing a column called “The Ordinary Man”. Is Phillipose suffering from the family “condition. Is he an ordinary man? The reader learns that this Dr. Digby Kildour has an unfortunate love affair with Celeste Arnold, the wife of Dr. Claude Arnold, the unfit doctor who is his superior. When Celeste dies in a fire that gravely injures Digby, he is secretly taken to Dr. Rune Orquist, a Swedish doctor who has decided to devote the rest of his life to the creation of a Leprosarium. Rune is an accomplished surgeon, skilled in restoring some function to some of the lepers, and he is able to somewhat restore the use of Digby’s hands, but not to their former prowess. He will not be able to do complicated surgeries again. At some later date, Elsie aids in Digby’s recovery by placing her hands over his. She guides his hands and shows him he can still use them to do some less sophisticated surgeries. Phillipose and Elsie married. A student and an accomplished artist, she married him when he promised to let her develop her skill and continue to produce art. Did he fulfill his promise? After the tragic and unexpected death of their only child, a son Ninan, at the hands of a tree that Phillipose treasured and so didn’t cut down, although he had promised to do so, both are overcome with anger at each other and grief. She is taken to Gwendolyn Gardens by dear friends to recover. There, she meets Digby again and a deep friendship begins. Phillipose, meanwhile, is using opium to excess, to soothe his pain. When Elsie does not return, he becomes addicted to it. During her absence, Big Ammachi kept writing to Elsie. When Baby Mol became ill, she felt obligated to return to Parambil. During that time, she discovers she is pregnant again and her daughter is born. She names the child Mariamma, after Big Ammachi. Shortly after the birth, however, Elsie disappeared and was presumed drowned. The child, Mariamma, is raised by her grandmother with the same name. Mariamma grows up to become good friends with Yelin. Shamuel is Big Appachen’s dearest friend. Joppan, his son, is Phillipose’s dearest friend. Now Mariamma is his son Yelin’s dearest friend, so the circle is complete. Because of their different stations in life, due to the unfair caste system, they are not afforded the same benefits in life, but they are still devoted to each other, helping each other whenever they can. Yelin becomes a revolutionary, a Naxalite, a Marxist fighting for the Communist cause in India. Mariamma does not support him in this effort, but the world is changing and they part. When Big Appachen died, Mariamma was called Big Amacchi and her name was lost to her. As the book follows her for about seven decades, the reader learns about the Caste System and the history of India regarding medicine and civil rights, including the advancements made. As it reveals what is considered a family curse, a genetic flaw is discovered that brings tragedy to every generation, but it may be able to be remediated as medicine advances. This story is told with tenderness and read with such a tender voice that it is impossible not to be drawn into it and to become captivated. Although, at first, it is really hard to keep track of the characters, because there are so many and the names are so unfamiliar, the author takes the storyline back and forth in time and then reunites it with each character, so their connections are revealed, albeit very slowly and carefully and with great detail. I hope I have recorded it correctly, since I have had to rewrite and correct it several times. The timelines and the places the novel takes the reader are richly described. The reader is taken to the schoolhouse with the characters and witnesses the shame of those not allowed to be educated. The reader witnesses the exhaustive medical training, the abusive treatment of young women, and also the lack of respect for widows. The reader sees the terrible way that the disabled are treated, especially those in the leprosarium. The caste system is alive and well in the early days of the 1900’s and it is ugly to witness. One hopes today there are few remnants left. Stone statues without heads, disfigured hands, disease and disability, medicine in India, the Caste system, complicated relationships, arranged marriages, inheritances, racism, injustice, are coupled with humor, kindness, true love and passion. It is infused with imagination, magic, legends and creativity. Who is Mariamma’s godfather? Why did Phillipose die? What secret did he wish to reveal? What is the significance of the tree, the beheaded statues, the hands? Why were so many of the family members, mainly men, afraid of water? Were all the deaths really related? What is finally discovered to be the real cause of “The Condition? Who helped to discover it? Verghese draws upon his background and medical training for this novel. Still, he sought the help of many talented and well-trained people so that he knits this story together with deep research into a magnificent piece of cloth with all the raised questions ultimately answered. ( )

The story draws me in with vivid description of the characters, the time frame of the history, and the caste system in India. There was quite profound observation regarding the caste system that I want to applaud the authors for writing it. ( )

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. ( )