An epic novel imbued with the author’s love of India and its people.

“What defines a family isn’t blood but the secrets they share.”….so says a character in this latest novel by the author of the contemporary classic, “Cutting for Stone”. There are many secrets held by the family into which a twelve year old girl, who comes to be known as Big Ammachi, marries at the turn of the century. Her father has died, her uncle now dictates the fate of the girl and her mother, and a marriage broker arranges a match with a widower several decades her senior. The marriage proves to be a happy one, and Big Ammachi adores her husband’s young son JoJo. She misses her mother terribly, but grows to love her new home, Parambil, in Kerala on the Malabar coast of South India. There is an unusual pattern in her husband’s family….in every generation, at least one member of the family has a strong aversion to water and dies by drowning; the health condition which causes this puzzling affliction becomes known as “The Condition” . Their land is surrounded by water, which makes this terrible fate almost impossible to avoid, and Big Ammachi discovers this secret only after tragedy strikes. Decades go by, and changes roll through the country of India as it chafes against British rule, sends its sons to fight in World War II, and achieves independence. Within India, the rigid caste system loosens at least a bit, but prosperity doesn’t come to all equally, and there are uprisings against the ruling castes. Big Ammachi and her family love, fight, marry, bear children, and suffer tragedies, but their faith, their strong family bonds, and their love for Parambil survives.

When a novel comes in at over 700 pages, its story cannot be distilled into a simple paragraph. The Covenant of Water is an epic tale which made me think back to the novels of James Michener or Colleen McCullough, a multigenerational family saga with a strong sense of place. I began the novel not knowing much about this part of India, nor about the Christian community that resides there. Through Dr. Verghese’s tale, I learned a great deal about both, and encountered a friendly elephant, a leper colony, and a doctor of humble beginnings who travels from Glasgow to India looking to become a surgeon. While it was by no means a quick read, I found the novel to be an eminently enjoyable one. It was a pleasure to immerse myself in luxurious storytelling, coming to know and care for each quirky character. In the span of Big Ammachi’s life, her family and her country experience so much change, societal turmoil, and personal losses, but it is not a sad novel because they are not people without hope. They persevere against adversity and look ahead to better days.

For those who enjoyed reading “Cutting for Stone”, i strongly encourage you to pick up a copy of Abraham Verghese’s latest offering. If authors like MIchener, Clavell or McCullough appeal to you, then I urge you to give this a try. Know that it will be a commitment of time, but one that will reward the reader with an addictive story and characters who will stay with you after the last page has been read. Many thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for allowing me access to an advanced reader’s copy of the novel.

This sweeping saga full of drama and tragedy, features an Indian family mysteriously prone to drowning and a Scottish doctor who comes to India to learn surgery. Like Verghese's earlier novel Cutting for Stone, there are many detailed descriptions of medical conditions and procedures that somehow manage to not be tedious.

Thank you NetGalley and Grove Atlantic, Grove Press for the early advanced copy.


This book was very out of my comfort zone and would probably be in the top reads of 2023 for me.
The story spans across 3 generations in a family in India, it starts in 1900 and ends in the late 1970s. This is a mix of genres, historical and literary fiction, coming-of-age, medical fiction, and even some mystery.
I have learned so much about the history of India and its culture. The writing is very lyrical and detailed, but every detail plays a role in the book. It is very long but things kept happening. The author introduced a major plot twist at 94% that made me gasp. There were events that made me cry and I could not stop turning pages.
The volume of this book is absolutely amazing, author packed so much but it was not overwhelming.
If you like to stay in a book for a long time, get to know the characters, and understand them, this book would be perfect for you. I am so glad I gave this a chance, this story will stay with me forever.

Every generation, at least one member of this Malayalam family dies from drowning. Big Ammachi, the family matriarch, comes to call it “the Condition.” We begin the novel with Big Ammachi’s wedding & it ends after her death, so it’s certainly expansive.

Some of the passages in this novel are just beautiful, and it covers a lot of ground. The family dynamic also made sense to me. I loved that everything centered around Big Ammachi. Even though she married into the family, she becomes the spine of the family itself. I also learned a lot! Some of the characters frustrated me to no end (a good sign!), and I liked the ending.

But not everything worked for me. I knew this book was a a big boy before reading it, but I mean it was LONG. I’m sorry to say that at times reading it felt like a bit of a chore. There were bits in the middle that just d r a g g e d, and there are lots of characters, the majority of whom remain underdeveloped despite nearly 800 pages of opportunity. Personally, I didn’t find the (very) detailed surgical & medical passages captivating, but I suppose one should expect it since the author is a medical doctor.

All in all, I don’t regret reading it! But it wasn’t my favorite.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me an advanced copy of this book.

Spanning almost 8 decades and 736 pages long, The Covenant of Water was an immense look at a family line in a Christian family living in a community at the southern tip of India. The author, a medical doctor and previous author of Cutting for Stone and other books, writes both analytically and lyrically. The prose is beautiful, if not a bit too detailed at times, and his love of medicine shows through in the themes covered in this story.

Cutting for Stone is one of my all time favourite books and I was excited to hear that a new family saga was coming out. The layers in this story are deep and engrossing and it was easy for time to pass without me noticing. I fell in love with some of the characters and found the medical side of the story quite fascinating.

The idea of a Condition that is present in the lineage that displays itself as a fear of water and a susceptibility of drowning was creative. In Kerala, where the story takes place, drownings make up more than 14% of deaths in children. The Malabar Coast is an area where water is everywhere, in rivers and running through canals and along the coastline.

Colonialism and independence, disability, family/intergenerational relationships, caste systems, medicine, addiction, poverty, calamity and politics are just some of the numerous themes Verghese tackles.

Overall, I found this to be a book to learn from, one that found me down the Google rabbit hole, a book that necessitated notes (for me), had smooth transitions and the enjoyment of looking back at little tidbits from the story that become important later on. It was also long and very slowly paced but if you have the patience I think it pays off in the end.

Thank you to @groveatlantic and @netgalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. The Covenant of Water publishes May 2, 2023.

This is an epic, multi-generational medical mystery tale steeped in the natural beauty of Kerala on the Malabar coast of Southern India. Over the course of 70 years we follow the the lives of Big Ammachi (mother) and her descendants, from her arranged marriage at a very young age, through years of love, triumphs and tragedy and the slow unraveling of "the condition," a medical mystery that has plagued her husband's family for generations, robbing each ensuing generation of at least one child by unlikely drowning. This novel offers so many opportunities to learn about the history and geography of Kerala that my reading was frequently interrupted by trips to Wikipedia and Google Maps to study the Christian community dating back to the apostles, and their agriculturally-based economy connected by an intricate network of waterways. The reader is witness to the transformation of this remote tropical backwater to a thriving metropolis with its own hospital over the course of 70 years. As with Verghese's other novels, the art and science of medicine becomes a dominant character in and of itself and delivers surprising and touching moments.

Abraham Verghese is one of my favorite authors, an example of one of those super-humans whose diverse talents can't help but inspire awe: physician and award-winning author. I hungrily and gratefully downloaded this ARC from NetGalley with great anticipation. Despite the highlights described above, however, I now wish I had waited for a more edited and polished version of this novel. There are certainly sparks of literary brilliance, but overall the story dragged, the metaphors were heavy-handed and the ending required too much exposition to wrap up the details. The characters were not as well-developed as they could have been and the extraneous details detracted from the plot and sabotaged the pacing. I'm sorry to say that was work to finish reading this one. ~ Ms Dimmick

Yes, old man, yes, eyes open to this precious land and its people, to the covenant of water, water that washes away the sins of the world, water that will gather in streams, ponds, and rivers, rivers that float the seas, water that I will never enter.

In the year 1900, at the South Indian state of Travancore, a girl of twelve is married off to a widower of forty who has a strange abhorrence to water. The girl, bought up around water and a devout Christian, survives and thrives in Parambil, when tragedy strikes and secret of a terrible curse haunting the family from centuries is revealed. Thus starts a tale spanning three generations of men and women bound by a covenant of water- the heart wrenching tale of loss, grief, anger, suffering, passion and endurance.

The Covenant Of Water is the upcoming novel written by Abraham Verghese, a Malayali doctor settled in US. I received an advance copy for reading and providing an honest feedback thanks to Netgalley and the publisher. My primary reason to choose this novel is it being set in Kerala. There are many Malayalam novels that keep a family in its focal point and explore the social, political, cultural and economic situations of the society through its members and their relations with each other and with society. The Covenant Of Water also has a similar plot structure. But additionally there is an element of mystery that is beautifully unravelled.

The Covenant Of Water has a very simple and organic narration style which is descriptive to some extent. It is very atmospheric and to the credit of the writer, the reader can effortlessly envision the environment while reading. This factor becomes essential because geography is also an important character of the novel. The plot is pushed on by its colorful and complex characters and once acquainted, each of them make the reader invested in their motives, actions, consequences and the ultimate destiny. The plot is a huge jigsaw puzzle and it was interesting to see some of the pieces coming together unexpectedly to reveal a bigger picture.

Like action set pieces moving the story in aa good action movie, medical procedures are very crucial in The Covenant of Water. The writer has passionately poured out his expertise as a surgeon on its pages. Detailed descriptions of brain surgery, complexities of child birth, skin grafting and more appear more than once. But all these forms integral part of the plot.

If I have to sum up the story of this mammoth 736 pages novel in a single sentence, 'this is an account of the effort of its characters to prevent repetition of history by breaking the cycles to which they are tied to.' Every character finds themselves to be part of a large cycle and are destined to replicate the fate of some predecessor. They are aware of it and are desperate to break the cycle and escape out of it.

An epic new work of historical fiction by Abraham Verghese which, in a letter to his readers, he says is based on his own mother's stories. It is set in Kerala, India, spanning the years from 1900 to 1977. We meet the Parambil family and their secret: in each generation, going back several, a family member has died from drowning.

The story is so rich and evocative. It deals not only with complicated family relationships, friendship and love but also with social issues like the caste system and the right of a nation to be free to rule itself.

"....[W]hen I come to the end of a book and I look up, just four days have passed. But in that time I've lived through three generations and learned more about the world and about myself than I do during a year of school." So true!

Many thanks to author and publisher for providing me with an arc of this new book via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and the opinions expressed are my own.

There is no debate that The Covenant of Water is a beautiful, immersive, evocative piece of writing. At 800+ pages it’s also a vast and lush generational story of epic proportions. But… around the half way point I admittedly began to feel increasingly frustrated with the meandering and slow moving story telling. Most unsatisfying is the fact that Varghese takes his sweet time for the majority of the book then tries to pack in several new revelations (brain tumors, Lenin returns, Mariamma finds out she’s not Phillipose’s daughter, Digby is her father, her mother is alive, and she’s a leper) all in the last 100 pages that feel almost operatic in their melodrama because they never get the nuanced examination and treatment as Varghese gives the rest of the book. I am by no means advocating that the book should be longer. It just needs some serious editing. Overall, despite these drawbacks, it’s still a wonderful read.

Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century and up until the 1970s, the Convenant of Water is the epic saga of the Parambils of India, who can date their family heritage back seven generations. They are St Thomas Christians living as a minority community in what is largely a Hindu culture.
When Mariamma is twelve years old she is married off to a much older widower with a young son. As the story grows, so does the number of family. members. Each has his or her own particular story with two constant threads interweaving the generations. The first is that the family seems to have a curse in that offspring are likely to die by drowning. Why and how this is so is a mystery. The second thread is the pull toward the practice of medicine for many family members.
Verghese is a master of brilliant flowing, almost poetic prose, written with passion. His first book, Cutting For Stone was a masterpiece. I so looked forward to this one but it fell short, as it was exceedingly looooong and lost my interest at times, only to engage me again at other times. I felt like there might be more than one book here that would have held up better in separate volumes.
On the plus side, the author was able to immerse me in the rigorous training in which doctors must partake. I felt I was there. He compassionately described the life and trials of lepers. Love stories abound and add a warm and beautiful personal flavor. The plight of India as an possession of outsiders, and the internal fight for independence and then division is clearly drawn. In fact so many important issues reside in this huge saga that it would be impossible to credit all of them.
It truly hurts me to rate this book three stars. It was the unevenness of the read that drives my rating. For me it was a great writer, writing more than the story warranted. Yet, I’m glad I read it. My sincere thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for gifting me an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I was so excited to receive a pre-publication copy of The Covenant of Water. I have fond memories of Cutting for Stone and expected and hoped this book would be more of the same. Many of the same elements are here - an epic family saga, a setting that was unfamiliar to me with an opportunity to learn, lovely descriptions of place and characters, and medicine. But there was simply too much in this book, too many characters, too much history, too much politics, and too many jumps in time and place. The one thing The Covenant of Water did not have too much of was good editing.

The story takes place over 70 years in Kerala, on southern India's Malabar coast. Verghese tells the tale of three generations of a family in which at least one person dies of drowning in each generation. A 12-year-old girl is married off to a 40-year-old widower with a young son in an arranged marriage. She comes to be known as Big Ammachi, the matriarch of the family, and their story unfolds over 736 pages. As in Cutting for Stone, medical procedures, with detailed hand and brain surgery descriptions, play a central role. It is an interesting story, but with so many details and interruptions, the flow of the good story is easily lost. Reading became tedious. Is all this necessary? The answer was no; this book was too much work for me for too little payoff.

Thank you to Grove Press and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of the book. It will be published on May 2.

An epic, multi-generational story of finding one’s passion, devotion and faith. Verghese once again so lovingly writes about the profession of medicine - an ode to physicians.

This is a truly masterful novel, wide in scope and beautiful in execution. The reader gets a great understanding of South Indian culture, particularly of the St. Thomas Christian community there. Verghese writes like a true artist, with tantalizing detail and a fine understanding of human character. The medical descriptions in particular are brilliant.

My favorite part was when an expat doctor had a spiritual epiphany and completely changed his life trajectory.

That being said, I am giving up halfway through. That’s because this is a family saga that spans many generations, and I found it hard to keep track of the many characters as the decades passed. I had cared deeply about the original characters, and was disappointed to have to depart from them to try to care about their offspring. This is often a problem for me when reading family sagas. Other readers will surely be entranced with the way history unfolds and affects the various descendants. The author’s previous novel, Cutting for Stone, was one of my favorite books of the decade, and I had been eagerly awaiting this new one. But to me, it just didn’t enthrall in the same way. I hesitate to write that, though, because of my deep respect for the writer and his amazing compassion for the human condition.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance review copy.

It has been a long time since I have read a book that covered so many decades, had separate stories that all eventually wove into each other, and kept me reading long into the night. The closest I can come to describing this experience is binging on a 10-episode series on Netflix.

Verghese's last book was Cutting For Stone--a word-of-mouth sensation that had friends discussing it all the time. It was a masterpiece. Now fourteen years later, comes The Covenant of Water, an epic voyage in Southern India from 1903-1977. The story opens with a twelve-year girl being married off to a forty-year-old man whom she'd never met. We follow her to her new home where she quickly becomes a mother to the man's two-year-old son and chef of the kitchen. A mysterious phenomenon hangs over the husband's family for as far back as people can remember. Someone in every generation dies in water. It is called The Condition. The family lives in a lush part of the southwestern part of India that became known as Kerala. I knew nothing about this area. Verghese's descriptions of the land, the number of islands that make up some of the villages, and the immense amount of water brought this area to life for me.

A side-by-side story tells of a young Scottish man, Digby, who wanted to be a surgeon for as long as he could remember. He was from Glasgow, treated as a second-class citizen and couldn't get into any medical schools in Scotland, and eventually ends up in a similar part of India. As a white man, he is expected to treat Indians as he was treated by wealthy Scots from 'good' families. These two threads weave back and forth, periodically crossing each other for a short amount of time and then pulling apart. Eventually, it all comes to one conclusion.

There is a large cast of wonderful characters, most of them deeply flawed but well-loved. The young bride who opens the book is the focal point for seven-eighths of the book, She is the north star of the ever-growing family, the person who makes everything all right even if she can't fix it.

Time, being one of the more important characters in this book, begins to take on a dream-like quality. . The young have hopes for the future. As they age, their thinking turns to reminisces of the past. What they did, what they should have done, regrets, grief, gratitude. Life moves on, and India changes dramatically. But all the politics that are so well-known to us don't figure much in this small part of the world. This is a book about relationships. Relationships to people, to family, to the Caste System, and to time,

In this book, life is hard, sometimes excruciatingly hard, There is so much one is powerless over: illness, death, and monsoons, One can only move on. These lives are lovely and lovingly portrayed when the characters are children but as they age, things happen. How they handle those happenings determines their future. Without the benefit of therapy or 12-step programs, they have to sort their own lives out. We watch the sorting out phases like a fly on the wall. Some come full circle and can make amends to themselves and, if necessary to others.

Verghese must have done enormous research into medicine, especially leprosy and - I wasn't sure if The Condition (dying by water) was a real disease but how the medical aspect is handled and told to us, the reader. convinces us that doctors, clinics, and hospitals are more important than almost anything that can be brought to the poorer areas of India where the Caste system is alive and well.

This is a book that is over 700 pages. There is so much more to say but really, you should go read it yourself. Just think: Binging on a book!

The Covenant of Water is absolutely sweeping in scope and a family saga for the ages.
At the center of the story is an Indian family who lives in an area surrounded by water. Ironically, this family is also plagued by generations of drownings.
The reader is also introduced to a community in South India that is going through decades of change.
Follow the story from the early 1900's through 1977. With poetic, lyrical writing this story is unforgettable.
Thank you to the publisher and netgalley for the ARC in exchange for my review.

This is a well written novel. It is a bit lengthy. Sometimes to the detriment of the story because it is getting bogged down in details but the story is still interesting. Recommend reading this one.

Thanks to the publisher & NetGalley for advanced copy in exchange for my honest review

5 stars! Buy this book now! I cannot tell you how much I loved this book. I remember slowly being drawn into the narrative of Cutting for Stone, Verghese's previous novel that came out more than a decade ago. And when you start The Covenant of Water, the mastery of the novel helps you understand why we had to wait so long for another masterpiece. (That and the fact that Verghese is an MD and professor.

The Covenant of Water follows a multigenerational family in India from 1900 to 1977. It follows Big Ammachi (“Big Mother”) from a young bride through multiple generations of her family. It's partly about "the condition" in which members of her family throughout the generations dies by drowning. But it's also about family and strength and love, both marital and between parent and child. As an MD Verghese infuses deep medical knowledge throughout, but it's fascinating.

I read this 700+ book in a week. I couldn't put it down- and totally want to buy a copy to read it again.

thanks to .#NetGalley for the ARC. #TheCovenantofWater

Loving both Abraham Verghese's memoir "My Own Country" and "Cutting For Stone" plus seeing him speak at an author's event has made me impatient for him to finish and publish his latest book "The Covenant of Water". It took 14 years, but in early February I had an advanced copy and I sat down to read. Oh, I wanted to love it...and there was so much to love as his ability to paint picture with words is second to none...this man can write! Unfortunately, because of the vast amount of medical jargon and paragraphs of medical descriptions, I found myself losing the thread of the story and finding it easy to put down. Never had it taken me almost 2 months to finish a book...never! Between the medical descriptions and the amount of Indian dialect, I found myself floundering. Perhaps it's my failing, but I truly hope before publication an editor has sat down and done a heavy edit. The medical school descriptions of classes are not needed (unless you plan on being a doctor, I guess). I am glad that I was able to learn so much about India, Kerala and a people burdened with a British occupation and an unimaginable class system. Again, I'm probably in a minority but I am so disappointed and sad that I waited so long and will have to wait a long time for his next novel. I want to thank Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest opinion.

Verghese forges these deep relationships between characters, both platonically and romantically. He writes something akin to destiny, which is a hard feeling to pin down in literature. (I think.)

I loved the medical content, like Cutting for Stone. This is right in my wheelhouse, to the point where I wished I could scrub in and be privy to the medical expertise in person! He has a beautiful way of capturing life and all of its longing.

My only concern would be the length, as there were parts that felt like the extra detail was unnecessary. I went along for the ride because I knew this would lead to something beautiful — and it did. Loved this book. Love this author.

As a big fan of Abraham Verghese’s earlier novel Cutting for Stone, I was eager to dive into his newest offering, and jumped at the chance to receive a pre-publication copy of The Covenant of Water from NetGalley. Many of the very same things I loved about Cutting for Stone were present in the The Covenant of Water: a highly nuanced family saga crossing multiple generations and timelines; well-developed, memorable characters sharing believable relationships; lyrical, evocative language that absolutely brings the setting to life; social issues you can really sink your teeth into; and interesting medical situations made relevant even for non-medical readers. Yet . . . the newer novel didn’t quite hit the same high notes for me. I found the first 350 (or so) pages to be a smooth and interesting ride (yes, there were many characters to keep track of, but a simple list helped me manage that), but there were some pacing issues for me after that. If a book is going to be as long as this one (over 700 pages), it really shouldn’t bog down in the middle. I’m sad to say, The Covenant of Water did just that. Strong editing - to keep it more in the 500 page range (like Cutting For Stone) - would have helped to tightened things up while keeping this involved story moving forward. As it is, it becomes a bit of a free-for-all of issues, characters, and near-misses in the middle section of the novel. Things do come together nicely in the end, so if readers are patient enough to slog through those middle portions, there is a nice pay-off in a satisfying - and fitting - ending.

I am happy to have read The Covenant of Water. I found it to be interesting, informative, and quite enjoyable. I think it was just a little . . . too long.

Thank you to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for providing me with a pre-publication copy of this book.