"Wow", simply "Wow", is the only way I can express my feeling as I finish the book " The Covenant of Water" by Abraham Verghese. While I have read more than a fair share of books there are a select few that have evoked as many emotions in me as a reader as this one did. Ranging from love to sympathy to empathy to a deep appreciation for practitioners of medicine to nostalgia, the gamut of feelings that I went through when reading this book was quite a journey. And any book that takes its readers through such an extensive list of emotions is one that I would strongly recommend to other fellow book afficionados.
While the author Abraham Verghese has been on my radar for quite a while now with his book "Cutting for Stone" on my 'to read' list, I happened to notice that "The Covenant of Water" was among the Goodreads list of best books of 2023 and hence came to my immediate attention. As if that wasn't enough the book blurb which read as under piqued my attention all the more and man, was it worth the read or what.
"The Covenant of Water" by Abraham Verghese is an expansive, multi-generational epic set in India from 1900 to 1977, detailing the lives of a Malayali family living in a segregated, colonized society. The narrative begins with a 12-year-old girl, Big Ammachi, being wed to a 40-year-old widower. As she matures into her role as a wife and mother, she grapples with the complexities of India's caste system, particularly as it impacts her son Philipose's friendship with Joppan, a boy from the landless caste of pulayan.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, a character named Dr. Digby Kilgour leaves his homeland for India to escape his own problems, only to find himself caught in an affair with a colleague's wife and accused of a fatal medical error. His story ultimately intertwines with Big Ammachi's family in surprising ways.
As India moves towards independence, Big Ammachi's granddaughter enters medical school, seeking to uncover the root of a family curse tied to water. Multiple plotlines converge through a series of coincidences and sudden incidents, and while characters remain relatively static, they accumulate and shoulder new experiences.
The story grapples with questions of community and belonging, underscoring the fragility and necessity of love amidst escalating political tensions. A common thread throughout is "The Condition", an inherited medical mystery that the characters are attempting to solve, which binds the family narrative together.
This engrossing novel focuses not only on emotional dynamics but also on biological realities such as developmental challenges, incurable afflictions, and hereditary diseases. Much of the narrative's authority lies in the characters' physical bodies and how they are shaped by life's vicissitudes. In the end, the novel contemplates the idea of human interconnectedness, reminding readers that all actions have repercussions, and no one stands alone.
While the 77 year timespan that the book covers makes for some delicious reading especially in terms of setting up the places, the environs in which the story takes place, the ancillary real life events which make up the backdrop, where the author really succeeds is by making all his characters so relatable across time and places. While his Kerala roots help him in writing the Kerala related characters and events almost perfectly, the portions of the book dealing with Scotland are also so well written that readers would find it hard to believe that he has no Scottish connection.
I personally have been a big fan of well written books that have real and relatable events as their backdrop with relatable characters who think the way I do, behave the way I do, react to situations the way I do and live life the way I do (or would want to). And this book ticked all those boxes in ways that even I personally never thought any book would do. And while I, as a reader live a fairly boring and mundane everyday life, the characters in this book, the events in their lives, the stories they live through are nothing short of dramatic and heart-wrenching. Another thing which I found extremely interesting in this book is that it had a 'spy thriller' feel in terms of the fact that while each chapter ended, I couldn't quite put the book down as I wanted to keep on reading to find out where the story led to next.
Big Ammacchi, Tham'ran, Shamuel, Dolly Kochchamma, Digby, Celeste, Cromwell, Philipose, Elsie, Mariamma, Lenin ... these are characters who will be etched in my memory for quite a while, and for sure, I will see parallels of all of them in real life encounters over the next few days.
