Months ago, I finished the over thirty hours audible version of The Covenant of Water, read by the author. It is one of my favorite books I have ever read, made even more so by hearing the words read as the author means them to be heard. We are immediately drawn into a family in trauma. This family is made up of a widowed mother and daughter, Maramon Christians in Southern India, forced to live with the dead husband/father’s brother. He is resentful and stingy towards them. The uncle arranges a marriage of Mariam, the twelve year old girl to a prosperous widower, a Christian landowner in his forties, father to JoJo, a toddler in need of care. Amachen’s sister has arranged the match on his end and, at first, we are more than alarmed at this child bride situation, but when the groom, too is alarmed, we breathe a sigh of relief. He is apparently not evil. Soon, Mariam becomes “Big Amachi” (mother) to JoJo and to her new community where she is welcomed and where she grows to love her husband as her benefactor when she is younger and later as a husband.
Little by little, Verghese weaves in more characters, a new doctor in a big city, whose life takes a tragic turn; a leper colony; a gifted young artist; characters in Big Amachi’s community who are formed by past and present servitude or criminality or religious fervor or political activism moving in and out of one another’s orbits and creating several generations of history that is constantly enthralling. I cannot adequately give this novel its due. The name comes from a family “curse” we learn about in time. Some behaviors of various family members portend it but the truth seems nonsensical and superstitious. In any event. This book is worth devoting your time to it. That. is. all.
They Called me Bookworm 