An Emotional Rollercoaster

The Covenant of Water, is an immersive experience in an emotional ocean.

It’s a voluminous novel, written in spectacular prose about endearing characters who live in the span between 1900 and 1977, and who collide with life with varying degrees of impact. It shares many of the qualities of Cutting For Stone, Abraham Verghese’s previous novel, which I fell head over heels in love with. Both books span over generations and continents, both involve orphaned kids and family secrets, both are as much about the science and art of medicine as about people and events, and both are written in exquisite language.

The Covenant of Water, was written over 13 years. Verghese is a medical doctor, author, Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine and Vice Chair of Education at Stanford University Medical School. How he finds the time to write a 730-page novel, is beyond me.

The first plot is about Mariamma, who lives in Kerala, in the south of India. In the year 1900 she is 12 and is married off to a 40-year-old widower, who lives in a far-away village and has a 2-year-old son. To comfort her, Mariamma’s mother tells her, “The saddest day of a girl’s life is the day of her wedding. After that, God willing, it gets better.”

It’s love at first sight between Mariamma and her stepson Jojo. Not so between her and her husband. In fact, the widower is reluctant to marry Mariamma. But over the years the couple grows to love each other and have children. The husband’s family has a strange “condition”. Many males are born with an innate fear of water and often die by drowning even in shallow water. The story follows the trials and tribulations of generations of this family, their relatives, neighbors, friends and servants.

The second plot in the book is about Digby Kilgour, a Scottish surgeon. As a Catholic he is looked down upon and is not allowed to develop his considerable talent. So he joins the Indian Medical Service and goes to Madras to get away from his unhappy past and to avail himself of better opportunities to train and practice surgery. “Oppressed in Glasgow. Oppressor here. The thought depresses him.”

The story is sprawling. Digby’s plot, although introduced early-on in the book, disappears for a long time, only to make a comeback towards the end and connect to the main one. A multitude of characters and subplots are introduced and developed. Medicine is practiced (my favorite) and joked about. A multitude of serious themes are explored. The oppressive cast system in India, the plight of lepers, rare diseases, harassment of women in education and society, religion, ghosts, love, art, addiction and loss are recurring themes. Funny episodes and lines are thrown in as well. Overall the very broad scope of the book seems to need a bit of trimming and tightening.

Verghese’s prose is meditative and sumptuous. “He stares at his blistered hands. The thumb alone would prove the existence of God. A working hand is a miracle; his are capable of removing a kidney or stacking bricks.” “Her scars, her burns, and her contractures were all on the inside, invisible…unless one looked into her eyes: then it was like looking into a still pond and gradually making out the sunken car with its trapped occupants at the bottom.”

His characters are smart, sensitive and lovable. Even his trees, elephants and ghosts are adorable! He makes the reader fall in love with his characters and then drags both character and reader through hell. I found the novel too emotional and jam-packed with suffering. I also found the great majority of the characters to be kind-hearted and self-sacrificing. There are only a couple of half-hearted villains. None of the many tragedies in the book are caused by villains. Life itself is the villain.

I greatly enjoyed the medical sections and especially the medical jokes. Akila, a head nurse at a Madras hospital helps/teaches the resident doctors in the L & D (Labour and Delivery) ward. She has her own “Better out than in” or Five-F rule: “Flatus, fluid, feces, foreign body and fetus, are all better out than in.” She yells commands at more than one doctor at a time. To one who’s using forceps to pull a baby out, “’Ayyo! You call that pulling, doctor?’ Akila shouts from the other side of the room, without looking. ‘The baby will drag you back inside, slippers and all, if you can’t do better.’” And to another, “Doctor! By the time you finish sewing up the episiotomy, the baby will be walking…”

The Covenant of Water is a portal into an expansive world that with its powerful prose exposes you to many profound themes, and puts you through an emotional roller-coaster.

An Uneven Road Story

News of the World by Paulette Jiles is a road story set in the wake of the American civil war. Its main character is a likeable, decent man, which makes the book a pleasant read despite its uneven writing style.

Captain Kyle Kidd is a 71-year-old veteran of three wars who earns his living by reading the news from different newspapers in the towns of Texas. He is persuaded to take Johanna, a 10-year-old girl, 400 miles south to her only remaining family, an aunt and uncle she doesn’t know. The girl’s parents and sister were killed by the Kiowa Indians four years ago, and she was adopted by them and raised as Kiowa. Johanna, originally of German heritage, has forgotten her English and German so she and the Captain don’t understand each other. She wants to run away, and he is committed to deliver her to her family.

Texas in the 1870s is a dangerous place. People on the road routinely get killed for money, power, political differences and vendettas. They are killed by whites and Natives alike. The Captain and Johanna travel from town to town, cross rivers, fight each other and their enemies, gradually understanding and getting used to each other, and forming a bond.

Although Jiles describes all the dangers of the times, and the calamity that befalls others in said times, she treats her characters gently. They are accosted by many rough characters, they are regularly rained and snowed on, they have to cross rivers, flee impending danger and even engage in shoot-outs with their inferior weapons, but they don’t catch cold, get pneumonia, go hungry, drown or get killed.

The captain is an intelligent, gentle and civilized soul, who appreciates the written word. His stage presence and ability to read and maneuver the crowd’s mood is well portrayed. His past including his becoming a messenger in the three wars he earned his title in, his marriage, having two daughters, and his owning and operating a printing shop, add layers to his personality. What’s somewhat lacking is equivalent layers in Johanna’s personality and past. She rebels, sulks, sobs, tries to run away, but we never find out why. All we know is that she spent her last four years with the Kiowa. What happened during those years, who raised her, what kind of relationships she developed and why she’s so attached to the Kiowa lifestyle, whether or not she remembers her birth-parents and what happened to them, is never revealed.

All that’s said is children who return to their families after being taken by the Indians are never the same. They long to go back and have a hard time adapting to their life with the white folk. Jiles whets your appetite, but never satisfies your curiosity.

There are other uneven sides to the book. There are some lovely poetic descriptions: “She wrestled with the yards of unfamiliar skirts and settled herself and smiled a small, slight smile at the sepia-toned, dripping world of the Red River valley. It was more a lift of the powdery blond eyebrows than a smile.”

And then there are some lengthy details of guns, shooting, wagons, horses, and geography that lose the interest of readers not familiar with those topics.

“Then a .45 long Colt round struck to his right like a hammerhead, about six feet away and then he heard the muzzle blast.”

“There was no floor arm on the enry and its hot barrel and the magazine tube had to be handledHenry and its hot barrel and the magazine tube had to be handled with a glove.”

“Take the road alongside the Red east to Spanish Fort…and then from Spanish Fort to southeast road to Weatherford and Dallas… Get to Spanish as quick as you can and away from the Red because it’s still coming up. From Weatherford and Dallas you can get directions for the Meridian Road heading south.”

There are occasional blasts of humour, but those are few and far between. “The man was too big to be a human being and too small to be a locomotive. He had been shot out of the tower of the Bardsley mansion and when he fell three stories and struck the ground he probably made a hole big enough to bury a hog in.”

The sudden ending of the book arrives in the form of a single last chapter, which covers the span of a few years, in contrast to the first 22 chapters, which cover the span of a few weeks. In that one final chapter destinies are decided and loose ends are tied. Everything is neatly and conveniently categorized, slotted, shelved and sealed.

News of the World is a short book which compensates for its inconsistent style by making the reader root for an affable main character, and his traumatized 10-year-old charge.