Like many readers, I chose this book because of my deep affection for CUTTING FOR STONE, one of my all-time favorites of contemporary literature. In THE COVENANT OF WATER, Verghese maintains his high standard of line-level writing, with transporting descriptions of the characters and geography that create this world. Set in Kerala across eight decades, this book interweaves stories from various generations of the Parambil family, afflicted with a curse that one member of each generation dies at the hands of water.

This is an epic- as a result, large, slow, and vast in scope. Some readers will appreciate how the author incorporates so much history, geography, and culture into the work; others will wish that he would kindly return to the plot and characters. I fall in between: while I appreciate the writing, I wish it had been trimmed/edited a bit more. 3.5 stars rounded to 4 because of the magnificence of the language.

Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Press for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

"This is the covenant of water: that they're all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone."
It's not often that you read a 736 page book and think....I wish it wasn't ending! But this was the case for me with The Covenant of Water.
The Parambil family has a long history (at least seven generations) in which at least one family member has drowned. Their story begins in 1900 and ends in the 1970's, during which we become absorbed in a story of complex family relationships and friendships, secrets, and social issues, like the caste system, leprocy, and the concept of self rule for India. Thrown into the mix is Digby, a Scottish doctor who moves to India in 1933 to begin his surgical career. In his note at the beginning of the book, Dr. Verghese indicated that his mother's stories contributed to the book. It's an epic family and historical novel and reminded me in many ways of The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough.
The Covenant of Water is not an easy read - the living conditions in India and treatment of people is often harsh and difficult. Of course, with this particular author (who's also a doctor), there are the expected graphic descriptions of medical conditions and treatments.
Throughout the book, there are shocking events that impact characters you've grown fond of, and they will break your heart. But, humorous moments are also deftly woven into their stories to provide balance.
Cutting for Stone is one of my all-time favorite books and it will be joined by The Covenant of Water. Thanks to Netgalley and Grove Press for the opportunity to read this wonderful book in exchange for an honest review.

For more reviews and bookish posts visit: https://www.ManofLaBook.com

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese is a novel set in South India, following three generations of a family seeking answers to a curse. Mr. Verghese is a published author and physician.

A family living in Kerala, South India is enduring a curse for generations. At least one person in every generation dies by drowning. An addition to the family is a twelve year old girl, part of a Christian community, is sent to be married after her father passed away. Her husband is a good man and a hard worker, and she is being mentored by his family before taking on the duties of a wife.

The girl who has become the family’s matriarch, known as Big Ammachi, will witness changes and tragedies throughout her life.

I was looking forward to reading another book from Dr. Verghese since I enjoyed Cutting for Stone very much. A family saga taking place between 1900 and 1977 on India’s Malabar Coast seemed promising since a lot has happened in that area during that time.

If anything, I feel that The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese is too ambitious. The book tries to tell a story, but also incorporate Christian influences, rituals, politics, spiritual aspects, cast system challenges, customs, architecture, languages, colonialism, education, medicine (of course) and much more.

At several points I found myself just reading to finish – never a good sign. Some of the narrative was, frankly, exhausting to plow through. There are, however, beautiful descriptions, and an overall story which kept me going.

Some of the narrative seems repetitive, other just seemed wasteful (paragraphs ruminating on the flavors of spices). The side stories were interesting as well, but they get lost in the effort to make the novel more “literary” which, to me, seem to simply make the reading more challenging without adding any value to the work as a whole.

I did, however, enjoy the familial saga, as well as learning new things about a culture I knew very little about. While still not an expert, I certainly gained knowledge which, in my mind, made the novel a worthwhile read.

I still don’t know if the story or the history were the main narratives which drove the novel forward (albeit very slowly). But does it really matter?

I would give this fabulous epic 10 stars if I could. Magic, exotic, intoxicating from page 1. I loved it and it should be the book of the summer

I loved Cutting for Stone when I first read it, so when I saw Abraham Verghese I was so excited to read it. 

I read this book much slower than I usually do -- in part because it is so long, and in part because it is quite emotional and sad. I loved the scope and the span of time, seeing all the generations of the Parambil family. I loved each member of the family and was so sad to see unfortunate things happen to them. Each family member was so unique and quirky, and all written so well. My favorite characters were Elsie and Mariamma. I loved seeing Mariamma become so successful, especially in regards to the Condition. 

I also adored Digby and enjoyed the break in narrative that introducing his character created. He was endearing, and I especially enjoyed the early parts of him at Saint Bridget's.

The end is so perfect and gave my chills -- I loved how it all wrapped up, and it was so beautifully written.

This book is both very long and very sad but I would definitely recommend it -- the language is so rich and the span of life of the characters is written so lovely. I love reading about India, I have been to Kerala and Chennai and could picture many of the places described. 

Thank you to NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book!

4.5 rounded up with admiration for an author/doctor attending to his patients during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

“The 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 they’re all linked inescapably by their acts of commission and omission, and no one stands alone.”

The wait is over for those who enjoyed Cutting for Stone as I did, but reader beware! This tome is a hefty 740 pages and might be better enjoyed as an uninterrupted fall/winter reading experience.

The Covenant of Water opens in India, with a 12 year old bride’s arranged marriage to a middle aged man, and spans 70 years beginning in 1900. A family secret, whispered as the “Condition”, is one in which each generation loses a family member by a drowning. This unexplained phenomenon weaves its way throughout the fabric of the novel.
Anchored by a loving and determined matriarch, each character informs the rich themes of grief, forgiveness, and ambition, among others. The sensory backdrop of the southern tip of India enhanced every detail of the plot with stunning prose on every page and I truly enjoyed details about the evolution of the country during the 20th century. Mr. Verghese’s experience as a physician is apparent in fascinating passages about medical myths and treatments in this area of the world.
I selfishly hope that I don’t have to wait another 14 years for another Abraham Verghese novel, but know it will be worth the wait.
For those who enjoy sweeping family stories set in faraway lands, like Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic Publishing for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Wow – my first Verghese book. This book is more than just a fictional book; it has many themes, including a family saga, coming of age, medical fiction, and possibly some mystery. Not the typical book I read, but I am honored to have read it.

This book is an epic tale of a 12-year-old married off to a 40-year-old man and spans her lifetime and then some. Seventy years and 3 generations make this book a family saga encompassing love, friendship, tragedy, unremarkable sadness, pride, success, and the overall love of a family.
The writing is beautiful and articulate, and the dedication to detail is seen on each page. I can only imagine how that research alone for this book could have taken years.

Meeting each character with a purpose that you would only know as you read on.
Big Ammachi, Baby Mol, Digby, Rune, and Philipose are just a few characters whose lives interconnect throughout the book. Each character's life offered the reader a glimpse – reading and wondering how their lives would eventually intersect was my reasoning for continuing to read for hours.

The family she has married into has what is referred to as "The Condition" – a severe aversion to water. Many family members in the past (and present) have succumbed to water-related deaths. I found this so interesting as this family is literally surrounded by water. They anticipate with joy monsoon season, and to have the "condition" in such an environment dependent upon water is fascinating. Since the author is a doctor, figuring out the affliction was a genius way to use his knowledge and expertise. The medical themes in the book are descriptive but understandable to the everyday person. The intricacies of many of the surgeries and ailments helped me understand what was happening and what could happen and taught me at the same time. I had never known much about leprosy, and after reading this book, I have a better medical and emotional understanding of life for those with the affliction.

Yes, this is the longest book I have ever read, but the 700+ pages were worth every moment I spent reading. I was brought to Parambil in 1900 and finished in 1977 in Saint Bridget's Leprosarium, and the ride was beautiful and tragic. I finished this book learning so much about a family, a culture, the history of India, religion in India, and more than I could have imagined reading fiction.

Take the time, and you will need it, but commit yourself to reading this book, as it will surely be one of my all-time top reads.

I know now why it's taken Abraham Verghese so long to write a new book, fourteen years (!) after one of my favourite novels, Cutting for Stone. The Covenant of Water is an enormous book, spanning generations, continents, and the whole spectrum of life... including some deeply tragic moments in places – many places.

After the first hundred or so pages, I told my husband that I was glad about this. It felt like a book about life that didn't shy away from its difficulties. However, after a few more hundred pages, I looked up from the book and – as with fellow traumatic novels I've read (hello, A Little Life) – pondered why I was putting myself through this.

There is so much tragedy and it's not easy to read about. Did one family need to suffer so much? But many similar families have indeed suffered (and those with fewer means than this novel's family, even more so). In any case, I knew I had to keep reading.

This is a masterpiece of a book. I know I'll be thinking back to it for a long, long time. I'll also certainly reread it, but for now I need to let it settle. During the couple of weeks I've spent immersed in this huge book, I've fallen into its world. Exiting it feels both mournful and uncomfortable – like being thrown back into the real world alone – and that really speaks to Verghese's marvelously evocative writing.

I felt the same when reading Cutting for Stone. Both books are absolutely not novels to binge-read; I rarely read more than 30 pages at a time and savoured these like a small piece of dark chocolate after dinner. And yet I looked forward to getting back to the book, to checking in with the characters, observing what their days looked and felt like, and witnessing the family's evolution; slow at some points, rapidly transformative at others.

The final thing I'll say here is that Abraham Verghese is just so dang good at making you care about the world and the people he brings to life. Every detail is so precisely rendered and you can't help but feel invested. You too are sitting on the porch at Parambil, noticing as the elephant approaches the kitchen, watching family members leave and waiting for them to return. That's exactly what I was hoping for with this book, and I'm so glad it delivered.

4.5 stars. Thank you so much to the publisher for this advance review copy.

A beautiful family saga starting with a young girl married off to a widower with a strange affliction to water in a remote part of Kerala, India. This book covers almost 80 years following the family through happiness and sadness, love and loss, death and birth. Yes, the book is very long but honestly I would have read another 700 pages to stay with this family longer. Thank you to Netgalley for the chance to read and review this book!

There is so much to love in the Covenant of Water - the writing is gorgeous, poetic, engaging; the characters are well drawn, sometimes quirky; there is history and drama and family; there are over 700 pages! I wanted to love this book as much as I did Cutting for Stone, but there were too many digressions, too much detail that was largely irrelevant, too many characters that came and went, and not nearly enough careful editing to pare this down to the essence of the engaging story. 4 stars because Verghese can write with such amazing skill, but rounded down to 3.5 because this book could have been so much better than it was.

The second novel does not disappoint. Years after, Cutting for Stone, we are given The Covenant of Water. A literary masterpiece right out of the gate.
Spanning almost 80 years and encompassing her homeland of southern India we met "Ammachi."
As small girl of twelve she is to marry a man thirty years her senior to start a life after losing her father. What this stomach churning marriage unleashes is a heartbreaking blend of life, love, death, cures, mishaps, and the search for a cure in both eastern and western medicine. Whatever takes to ease the fate of future generations.
An emotional sweeping saga.

Yes it's really long but what a wow of a family saga that starts when a 12 year old is married off to a widower whose family has a "condition" that is problematic with water and concludes with her granddaughter, a physician, who finds out what it really is. In between, this is all about the family, a family of Christians in Kerala who farm, write, and make art all the while caring for others. Big Ammachi is very much the lodestone around whom all circulates- her daughter Baby Mol, her son, her grand daughter- but then there's Digby, a physician who has emigrated from Scotland in search of opportunity and Rune, a physician from Sweden committed to helping lepers. These are magnificent characters. Much happened in India between 1900 and the 1970s but in this novel, at least it happens outside of the bubble. There's a great deal of tragedy here but world events and major upheavals in India are mostly mentioned in passing, making this feel very intimate. Know that all will come together in the end. Thanks to the publisher for the ARC. A terrific read I found myself unable to put this down. Highly recommend.

My book club selected this book and I was lucky to get an advanced release copy from NetGalley to read and review. It weighs in at an intimidating 776 pages, covering the decades from 1900 to 1977, and intertwining multiple storylines of different people whose lives connect through marriage, community, medical care and happenstance. The book is written primarily chronologically, and gently switches between different key characters' arcs, following their lives for periods of time to establish key footholds in the story. Doctors and medical issues are central to a majority of the storylines, and you can tell a doctor wrote it, although medicine is secondary in my mind to the characters and relationships we are given beautiful visibility into through Verghese's writing. Art, and artistry are also featured quite a lot. Per the title, though, water is the thread that connects the various storylines as a recurring theme in various ways. Most certainly, Covenant of Water qualifies as an "epic" novel.

The author is Abraham Verghese, author of the best-selling Cutting for Stone, physician, and professor at Stanford medical school. I urge readers to review his wiki page to note that his parents came from the town of Kerala, India, a central home base for Covenant of Water. Dr. Verghese personally went to medical school in Madras, India, much like Mariamma in the book.

It is impossible to summarize such a far reaching book due to the time span and enormous cast of characters, each with their own complex storylines, but at its essence, we have a story of a loving family that comes together in Kerala through an arranged marriage and develops their lives and community intelligently and with good spirits. They suffer tragedy and normal human sadness, but they often triumph and show strength of character and bravery more often than not. The relationships are the key to this book - beautiful with deep love, respect and friendship. The writing is gorgeous.

Readers will have to be alert to stay on top of all the characters and storylines, as well as navigating the frequent use of Indian language words, not to mention medical narrative. It isn't difficult, but this isn't an easy recreational read. And when combined with its length, the reader really needs to commit.

I wouldn't have minded if the author had figured out a way to make this a 2-book series. Then I could have really savored each part of the story knowing it would conclude in some fashion within 350 pages or so lol. 5-stars.

Cutting for Stone is one of my favourite all-time novels: I still have my hard copy. When I heard Abraham Verghese had a new book coming out, I knew it was a must-read!
There is so much I have to say about this book but can’t put it all into words. When I had finished it, I just sat and absorbed the story; this was the most amazing read, I loved it! It captured history, mystery, medicine, multiple generations, religion, superstitions, sorrow, secrets, death, love and friendship.
This book covers over seventy years and three generations of a family beset by the Condition, as they call it. At least one member of the family in each generation dies from drowning. Water becomes an all-encompassing theme throughout the book; it’s all around them.
Set in southern India, the story opens in 1900 with a twelve year old girl on the eve of her wedding to a forty year old widower with a young son.
And, so it begins : 70+ years of a Parambil family, a fascinating love story with heartache and sorrow written into it. Life isn’t always easy for them, sometimes they’re hungry, there may be drought or monsoons to deal with but they have each other. You will cry and you will laugh.
There are so many facets to this book, it’s hard to bring it all together in a summary. There are multiple (interesting) characters, too. Despite this, it is cohesive.
I highly recommend this book. Seven hundred plus pages and every one of them enlightening and enjoyable. I love reading about different cultures and different times in their history and the effect the world has on them (and they, on it).

Thank you to the publisher, Grove Press, and to NetGalley for providing my advance copy.
But my biggest thanks goes to Abraham Verghese for this most special of books. I know it will stay with me for a long while.

“Cutting for Stone” is one of my Top 10 books ever, and like many readers, I’d waited a long time for a new book from Abraham Verghese. The wait was more than worth it. “The Covenant of Water” is, in short, a masterpiece. Verghese is a poet and a scientist, a humanist and a historian., and above all a great storyteller. I loved every word. (Will be reviewed in print and online in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on April 30.)

This book is character driven and atmospheric. I loved that the book has physician and nurses and we get to experience what they encounter in diseases. There was a lot of happiness and love in each character and an abundance of sad situations. It’s hard to put into words the experience it was to read this. I was completely emerged and transported to India and I got to know every single character deeply. I simply enjoyed every single page… I highlighted so many sentences and paragraphs, more than I have ever done with another book. There are deep and complex themes intertwined within the book. This is one of those books I will recommend to everyone I know, the kind that I want in hard cover and the one I will make as part of my keep forever pile. I highly recommend it, I loved it.

I loved Abraham Verghese's previous bestseller, Cutting for Stone, so I was excited to hear that his long-awaited next novel was being published. The Covenant of Water starts in 1900 with the marriage of a 12-year-old Indian Christian to a groom 30 years her senior. Despite that inauspicious beginning, the pair end up being devoted to each other, and Big Ammachi (as they eventually call the girl) becomes the matriarch of a large group of people including her own children and many others. She learns that the family she has married into has a hereditary affliction they call "The Condition" - several of the male family have died by drowning. Not knowing what it is or how to deal with it, the family copes as best they can by avoiding water, even though their district in southern India is surrounded by it.

This sweeping epic, which takes place over a span of three generations, is a novel of family, but in context of both history, medicine and faith. We learn a lot about India, including Britain's occupation of India and its aftermath. We also learn, because of Verghese's medical knowledge, of the progress of medical knowledge and technology, running parallel to a more primitive life lived by the residents of a remote rural area. As in Cutting for Stone, Verghese's descriptions of medical practices are informative without being dull or too complex.

There are a lot of threads weaving through this story, and I admit that at times I had trouble keeping track and wondered how it was all going to come together. Trust me - it came together in one of the most stunning and beautiful endings I've ever read.

It's hard saying more without spoilers, but let me just say that this is my favorite, favorite kind of book: a book that can teach you something while thoroughly engaging you in the characters and the story. This one will live with me for a long time.

Many thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for the advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A family curse is believed to be the cause of one death via water per generation. The novel spans several generations of an Indian family. Their relative poverty and harsh living conditions are compounded by the curse and losses.

Covenants are one of the most important themes in the Bible and this book tells the story about a devout Christian family and their covenant of water. Many generations of the Parambil family, living in Southern India (which is surrounded by water) had a hereditary medical condition which has caused death by drowning. This takes you through the lives of three generations and their family dynamic as they experience love, loss, marriage, children, faith, illness, cultural differences, secrets, fears, and so much more. I loved Verghese’s Cutting for Stone and this book, while different, had the same feel especially with the strong medical background. There were points in the middle of the novel that seemed a bit slow and drawn out but I enjoyed seeing how all the seemly non-related stories fit together. I really loved the descriptive geography and unique characters incorporated into the family’s life. The writing was so beautiful and immersive that I found myself looking up many new words and pictures of the locations described after reading this. This is definitely a story that will stay with you for a long time.

This is another ARC o received from Netgalley - I thought I was going to let the length of the book (700 + pages) deter me…. It took a little bit longer to read, but I can honestly say it was intriguing learning more about the Indian culture. Even though there were times it was a little slow, I found that the writers style and descriptive language kept mw going. Giving this a 4 stars for the writing style but not quite a 5 for the slow parts