the covenant of water
Spoilers to the book, and the ending WILL be present. I highly advise you do not continue if you plan to read it.
âFiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!â â Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water
Today, I finished the 700 page mass that is The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese. It was a tedious effort I admit. I held off reading for about a month starting it, daunted by the page count and not truely immersed (when it started to get interesting, it switched point of views and I had to become invested in an entirely different set of characters) in the first 200 pages. The timeline of the book jumps forward and backwards very quickly, where years can be skipped within a single chapter. I found myself a bit at loss during medical descriptions and operating scenes. But aside, I fell in love with this novel, particularly Mariamma's storyline near the ending. Simply put, this book is a testament to family, faith, and medicine.
The Covenant of Water is a historical fiction set from the years 1900-1977. The main POV is of a Indian-Christian family living in the town of Parambil within Kerala. We are introduced to a strange phenomenon within the family (coined The Condition) which causes a person within it to die of drowning every generation. First it follows Big Ammachi, the matriarch of the village, then Philipose, her writer son, and finally his physician daughter Mariamma who solves the secret to the Condition. A secondary, recurring POV is of Digby Kilgour, a Scot who migrates to India. However, this is not a synopsis so I will talk about things non-chronologically.
I recommend this book to anyone who can last through the constant cycling of new characters and new eras. I recommend this book to anyone who can trudge through boredom like a soldier. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to simply savour the scenes given rather than waiting for a direction. This is not a good book if you force yourself to read it.
Digby's part in the story is very confusing until you finally get to the end where it starts to actually make sense. During the start and middle it gets hard to care cus like why is this guy even here. The part where him and 9-year-old Elsie draw a portrait of his mum was sweet
Big Ammachi's death was very sad and well handled (and unexpectedâI fully expected her death to be at the very end of the novel, she's the main character after all)
As the times change, so do the people around you! But i wish it didnt because it has you remember so many characters oh my lord. But im not complaining its realistic that these many people have many people they know. I like how realistic it all is actually. Everyone has their ups and downs and nobody significant is completely irredeemable or a pure angel.
Mariamma becoming a doctor (and eventual neurosurgeon) felt monumental. Big Ammachi wasn't able to become a doctor as she was a woman. Digby wasn't able to continue being a surgeon because of the fire. Philipose wasn't able to pursue medicine because he wasn't meant to. Seeing the other people before her fail at the craft while she didn't.. Idk man. The passage of time and the people before her allowed Mariamma to pave her way into doctory things.
Of the final plot twist, it was unexpected. That's all I'll say because I don't really know how I feel about it
What I enjoyed about this book most was the familial connections and themes within (chosen or notâat the end of the day, they are one and the same). Big Ammachi and every person she nursed like her own, Philipose and Mariamma, Digby and his late mother, the list goes on. It's beautiful how much family can mean to people. It's exhilarating how much people can mean to people.
I also admire how well-researched this book is. Everything about leprosy, the Condition, the timeline periods feel like they make plausible sense. (I cannot verify anything because I have no record in medicine or history) Around the end of the novel, Mariamma, doing a brain autopsy of her father, labels The Condition as a variant of von Recklinghausen's disease [neurofibromatosis type II]. This final breakthrough brings closure: knowing what has been suffered is scientific.
âThe water she first stepped into 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 theyâre all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone.â â Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water
All water is connected, all people are connected, and all stories are connected. The past is linked to the present, the present is linked to the future, and the future is linked to the past. Everything we touch, everything we see, and everything we don't.