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OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SUBJECT OF A SIX-PART SUPER SOUL PODCAST SERIES HOSTED BY OPRAH WINFREY
From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret
“One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life. It’s epic. It’s transportive . . . It was unputdownable!”—Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.com
The Covenant of Water is the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the major word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years.
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.
A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.
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ISBN-10
0802162177
ISBN-13
978-0802162175
Print length
736 pages
Language
English
Publisher
Grove Press
Publication date
May 01, 2023
Dimensions
6.25 x 2 x 9.25 inches
Item weight
1.94 pounds
But such memories are woven from gossamer threads; time eats holes in the fabric, and these she must darn with myth and fable.
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A good story goes beyond what a forgiving God cares to do: it reconciles families and unburdens them of secrets whose bond is stronger than blood. But in their revealing, as in their keeping, secrets can tear a family apart.
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The chaos and hurt in God’s world are unfathomable mysteries, yet the Bible shows her that there is order beneath. As her father would say, “Faith is to know the pattern is there, even though none is visible.”
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ASIN :
B0BJSGV831
File size :
5257 KB
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Enabled
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Supported
Enhanced typesetting :
Enabled
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Named a Most Anticipated Book by the Washington Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Oprah Daily, Publishers Weekly (Top 10), Literary Hub, and BookPage
“One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life. It’s epic. It’s transportive . . . It was unputdownable!”—Oprah Winfrey, OprahDaily.com
“A rich, heartfelt novel . . . A lavish smorgasbord of genealogy, medicine and love affairs, tracing a family’s evolution from 1900 through the 1970s, in pointillist detail . . . What binds and drives this vast, intricate history as it patiently unspools are vibrant characters, sensuous detail and an intimate tour of cultures, landscapes and mores across eras . . . Verghese’s technical strengths are consistent and versatile: crisp, taut pacing, sensuous descriptions that can fan out into rhapsody . . . Verghese’s compassion for his ensemble, which subtly multiplies, infuses every page. So does his ability to inhabit a carousel of sensibilities—including those of myriad women—with penetrating insight and empathy . . . Rich and reverberant. The further into the novel readers sink, the more power it accrues . . . Grandly ambitious, impassioned . . . A magnificent feat.”—Joan Frank, Washington Post
“Grand, spectacular, sweeping and utterly absorbing . . . It is a better world for having a book in it that chronicles so many tragedies in a tone that never deviates from hope.”—Andrew Solomon, New York Times Book Review (cover review)
“An immense, immersive work, brimming with interconnected storylines that meander and converge like great river tributaries . . . The novel encompasses intense passion and tragedy, as well as a medical mystery . . . An essential, even healing feat of imagination, a whole world to get lost in.”—Anderson Tepper, Los Angeles Times
“Much will be written about Abraham Verghese’s multigenerational South Indian novel in the coming months and years. As we’ve seen with Verghese’s earlier fiction, there will be frequent references to that other celebrated doctor-writer, Anton Chekhov. There will also be continued invocations of the likes of Charles Dickens and George Eliot to describe Verghese’s ambitious literary scope and realism. Indeed, the literary feats in The Covenant of Water deserve to be lauded as much as those of such canonical authors . . . Ever the skillful surgeon, Verghese threads meaningful connections between macrocosmic and microcosmic details so elegantly that they are often barely noticeable at first.”—Jenny Bhatt, NPR
“Riveting . . . This is a novel—a splendid, enthralling one—about the body, about what characters inherit and what makes itself felt upon them. It is the body that contains ambiguities and mysteries. As in his international bestseller Cutting for Stone, Verghese’s medical knowledge and his mesmerising attention to detail combine to create breathtaking, edge-of-your-seat scenes of survival and medical procedures that are difficult to forget. Tenderness permeates every page, at the same time as he is ruthless with the many ways his characters are made vulnerable by simply being alive. Those scenes when a person must fight for their life make for some of the most gripping episodes that I have read in some time.”—Maaza Mengiste, The Guardian
“In the spirit of his breakout novel, Cutting for Stone, Abraham Verghese offers an epic melodrama of medicine . . . The miraculous melds naturally with medicine in The Covenant of Water, whether in the form of artistic inspiration or religious awakening . . . Most remarkably, this depth of emotion comes across even in descriptions of surgery, which one would expect to be faceless and technical, if not merely sickening. But not so in the taut depiction of a skin graft for a burn victim or a trepanning procedure to relieve a man’s swollen brain of fluid.”—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
“Over the course of three generations, two seemingly disparate, deeply connected narratives unfold in an ode to India, family, and medical marvels.”—TIME
“[A] surreal and sweeping epic.”—Vanity Fair
“Life unspools across seven decades, during which time Big Ammachi’s loved ones suffer maladies that are treated by practitioners of both traditional and Western medicine. The novel is a searching consideration of the extent to which seemingly contrary approaches to healing can coalesce.”—New Yorker, “Briefly Noted”
“Wow. This novel is long but Abraham Verghese is a master . . . A brutally intimate look at a mother’s love and the power of family, The Covenant of Water will go down as a classic.”—Zibby Owens, Good Morning America
“This book is gorgeous and truly immersive . . . I’m sad it’s over.”—Ann Napolitano, author of the New York Times bestseller Hello Beautiful
“When you come to the end of Abraham Verghese’s new novel, The Covenant of Water, you will feel that you have lived among the Indian and Anglo-Indian characters who populate its pages for almost a century. It’s that long. But it’s also that immersive—appropriately enough for a book so steeped in the medium and metaphor of water, as the title suggests . . . These lives, so finely drawn and intensely felt, are at once singular and inextricably bound together within the immensity of fate and faith—like 'the water that connects them all in time and space and always has.’”—Ellen Akins, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Fourteen years in the making, Abraham Verghese’s The Covenant of Water was worth the wait . . . A massive achievement. Rarely can such an intricate story, following a dozen major characters over more than 70 years, be described as flying by, but this one does . . . [Verghese] goes deeply into the history and culture of southern India while telling a story so engaging and lyrical it never seems academic . . . The Covenant of Water is a rousing good story, full of joy and tragedy and humor and beauty and ugliness—sometimes all at once . . . Verghese is a master at keeping these disparate characters on parallel paths that converge down the line. If you ever think he is wandering astray, be assured that he isn’t. All will come together in the end in a way that may make you gasp in appreciation. Throughout, Verghese woos us with beautiful language.”—Gail Pennington, Saint Louis Post-Dispatch
“Sweeping, intimate yet vast . . . Languorous and often lyrical, morally ambitious.”—Priscilla Gilman, Boston Globe
“Some of the more enjoyable hours of my summer were spent reading Abraham Verghese’s novel The Covenant of Water. In addition to its many pleasures—the richness of its sense of place, its kaleidoscope of characters, its humour—I was particularly drawn into it as a kind of love letter to the practice of medicine . . . The Covenant of Water felt like a call to arms, a plea to reimagine what medicine can be.”—Daniel Mason, The Mail on Sunday
“Beautiful, brilliant, and dexterously rendered . . . Characters so compellingly drawn that even now I can’t stop thinking about them.”—Susan Balée, Hudson Review
“Cutting for Stone fans, rejoice! Abraham Verghese is back with another grand epic that will sweep you off your feet . . . Resounding and astounding, intimate and expansive . . . Filled with shimmery, charismatic people who love deeply and dream big, The Covenant of Water is an entirely magnetic read that you won’t want to end.”—Al Woodworth, Amazon Book Review
“A family in Kerala, India, is affected with the Condition: Each generation one person dies by drowning. For more than 70 years Big Ammachi survives tragedy and triumph, growing from a 12-year-old bride into the matriarch as her country also comes into its own.”—Kate Tuttle, People, “Best New Books”
“Ever since Cutting for Stone, we have been eagerly awaiting another book by Abraham Verghese, and what a breathtaking return this is . . . An extraordinary look at what past generations have endured for the sake of the present, Verghese’s tribute to 20th century India is a literary feat you won’t want to miss.”—Brittany Bunzey, Barnes & Noble Reads
“Come to this epic novel by Verghese for the history of Kerala, India; stay for the devoted elephant. The bestselling author (and Stanford doctor) recounts the Parambil family’s ups and downs through a century of change, interlaying some of his medical expertise but never losing his commitment to how love allows people—and sometimes beasts—to choose goodness and care over politics and brutality.”—Los Angeles Times
“Breathtaking . . . The book beautifully explores the lessons we learn from our ancestors in an always changing world.”—Real Simple
“Abraham Verghese is a masterful writer. Each page in this massive book features exquisite descriptions, evocations of a particular time and place, populated by fascinating characters . . . A gem of a book.”—New York Journal of Books
“A novel so rich, so heavy with wisdom, authentic and fabricated history, and family stories snaking back through the years and heavy wet vines and red soil, between the stocky legs of Damodaran, the elephant who stands guard at Parambil . . . Allow yourself to become immersed in the laughter and tears, and discover the unclaimed secrets of this epic, wonderful novel.”—Book Reporter
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CHAPTER 1
Always
1900, Travancore, South India
She is 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.”
Soon she hears her mother’s sniffles change to steady breathing, then to the softest of snores, which in the girl’s mind seem to impose order on the scattered sounds of the night, from the wooden walls exhaling the day’s heat to the scuffing sound of the dog in the sandy courtyard outside.
A brainfever bird calls out: Kezhekketha? Kezhekketha? Which way is east? Which way is east? She imagines the bird looking down at the clearing where the rectangular thatched roof squats over their house. It sees the lagoon in front and the creek and the paddy field behind. The bird’s cry can go on for hours, depriving them of sleep . . . but just then it is cut off abruptly, as though a cobra has snuck up on it. In the silence that follows, the creek sings no lullaby, only grumbling over the polished pebbles.
She awakes before dawn while her mother still sleeps. Through the window, the water in the paddy field shimmers like beaten silver. On the front verandah, her father’s ornate charu kasera, or lounging chair, sits forlorn and empty. She lifts the writing pallet that straddles the long wooden arms and seats herself. She feels her father’s ghostly impression preserved in the cane weave.
On the banks of the lagoon four coconut trees grow sideways, skimming the water as if to preen at their reflections before straightening to the heavens. Goodbye, lagoon. Goodbye, creek.
“Molay?” her father’s only brother had said the previous day, to her surprise. Of late he wasn’t in the habit of using the endearment molay—daughter—with her. “We found a good match for you!” His tone was oily, as though she were four, not twelve. “Your groom values the fact that you’re from a good family, a priest’s daughter.” She knew her uncle had been looking to get her married off for a while, but she still felt he was rushing to arrange this match. What could she say? Such matters were decided by adults. The helplessness on her mother’s face embarrassed her. She felt pity for her mother, when she so wanted to feel respect. Later, when they were alone, her mother said, “Molay, this is no longer our house. Your uncle . . .” She was pleading, as if her daughter had protested. Her words had trailed off, her eyes darting around nervously. The lizards on the walls carried tales. “How different from here can life be there? You’ll feast at Christmas, fast for Lent . . . church on Sundays. The same Eucharist, the same coconut palms and coffee bushes. It’s a fine match . . . He’s of good means.”
Why would a man of good means marry a girl of little means, a girl without a dowry? What are they keeping secret from her? What does he lack? Youth, for one—he’s forty. He already has a child. A few days before, after the marriage broker had come and gone, she overheard her uncle chastise her mother, saying, “So what if his aunt drowned? Is that the same as a family history of lunacy? Whoever heard of a family with a history of drownings? Others are always jealous of a good match and they’ll find one thing to exaggerate.”
Seated in his chair, she strokes the polished arms, and thinks for a moment of her father’s forearms; like most Malayali men he’d been a lovable bear, hair on arms, chest, and even his back, so one never touched skin except through soft fur. On his lap, in this chair, she learned her letters. When she did well in the church school, he said, “You have a good head. But being curious is even more important. High school for you. College, too! Why not? I won’t let you marry young like your mother.”
The bishop had posted her father to a troubled church near Mundakayam that had no steady achen because the Mohammedan traders had caused mischief. It wasn’t a place for family, with morning mist still nibbling at the knees at midday and rising to the chin by evening, and where dampness brought on wheezing, rheumatism, and fevers. Less than a year into his posting he returned with teeth-chattering chills, his skin hot to the touch, his urine running black. Before they could get help, his chest stopped moving. When her mother held a mirror to his lips, it didn’t mist. Her father’s breath was now just air. That was the saddest day of her life. How could marriage be worse?
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Abraham Verghese
ABRAHAM VERGHESE is the Linda R. Meier and Joan F. Lane Provostial Professor and Vice Chair of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine. He sees patients, teaches students, and writes.
From 1990 to 1991, Abraham Verghese attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop at The University of Iowa, where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts degree.
His first book, MY OWN COUNTRY, about AIDS in rural Tennessee, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for 1994 and was made into a movie directed by Mira Nair and starring Naveen Andrews, Marisa Tomei, Glenne Headley and others.
His second book, THE TENNIS PARTNER, was a New York Times notable book and a national bestseller.
His third book, CUTTING FOR STONE was an epic love story, medical story and family saga. It appeared in hardback in 2009, and is in its 9th printing and is being translated into 16 languages. It is a Vintage paperback and was on the New York Times bestseller list for over 110 weeks at this writing.
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Customer reviews
4.6 out of 5
69,712 global ratings
Seattle reader
5
Rich in history and compelling characters
Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2024
Verified Purchase
The Covenant of Water tops my other favorite all-time book, Cutting for Stone, both by Abraham Verghese. His medical experience, compassion, and word-craft make every page a sensual, rich experience. Not to be missed.
11 people found this helpful
Mo/m
5
Exceptional read
Reviewed in the United States on May 30, 2024
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A remarkable, historic epic story of family and the heart. Verghese has an honest style of lyrical writing that is a tasty blend of sweet chai and spicy curry. It all goes down with that warm feeling of an exceptional read.
John M Houle
5
amazing book.
Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2024
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Powerful, well thought out and tied together. I loved the characters of this book and the descriptions of India. Excellent plot. Wonderful read.
Greg Barlin
5
Long and dense, but ultimately a beautiful tour de force
Reviewed in the United States on October 1, 2023
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Phew. I made it. Finished. Complete. Fin.
At 776 pages, The Covenant of Water is a commitment. It's long, it's dense, it's heartbreaking more often than it's not, and with every new character introduced, I found myself wondering where it was going and how it might end. But it's also beautifully rendered, meticulously researched, and a tour de force. Given that, I have no idea how I should rate it against everything else I've read this year.
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? When will it end?
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."
Shame on me for doubting Verghese or his intentions, and for presuming these seemingly disconnected pieces 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 has a purpose, and all of that intention is pulled together and made clear In 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.
It's been more than a decade since I read Cutting For Stone, and I remember it fondly although the details are admittedly hazy. Acknowledging the hazy memory could be off a bit, I still feel that The Covenant of Water represents Verghese taking his skills to another level. There is plenty of medicine in the book, like in Cutting For Stone, but more broadly than in that work, with Verghese tackling several diseases that have since been mostly eradicated (with leprosy leading the way). Verghese also uses almost 80 years of Indian history and the birth of the nation as a backdrop, starting with the British occupation and class (and caste) systems that evolved around that, through Indian independence and the battle between socialism and a more market-driven economy that followed. The role of women in Indian society is a consistently and critically examined theme. As such, in many ways The Covenant of Water is an ode to the strength and contributions of women, particularly in a more male-dominated society and culture.
So how do I rate this beast of a work, which was undeniably brilliant and complex but also struggled to retain my interest at times? For starters, it is the book for which I have the most respect among those I've read this year. I didn't enjoy it the most, and I wouldn't universally recommend it (as I said at the top, it's a commitment). But when I consider the amount of time, and research, and intricate plotting, and effort that went into this, and then compare that to some of the more enjoyable (but less expansive) books among this year's favorites, I have to acknowledge the author's accomplishment. While I didn't love every moment reading the book, and I found myself breaking it up and reading other things in between, I did really enjoy it if I look back on it in its entirety. If it had fizzled to a conclusion, that wouldn't be the case, but I think the final two sections of the book pull everything together in a wonderful way that made me appreciate the purposeful intention of all that came before.
For those of us that read regularly, I'm sure we've all thought to ourselves at some point, "I bet I could write a pretty good novel." I have certainly read books, good books, and come away still believing (or even being inspired) that I might be able to create something comparable. 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 -- this will probably dominate your nightstand for several weeks -- but trust that the payoff at the end is worth the journey to get there.
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740 people found this helpful
Jill
4
complex and intriguing
Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2024
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This book while incredibly long, kept my interest. Its complex and intriguing storyline and characters were developed slowly and brought the story out slowly as well.
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