For the last couple of years, The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese seemed to appear everywhere on Bookstagram. It was one of the talked-about novels, andlthough I hadn’t read Abraham Verghese before, his Indian roots were the reason for me to download it on my Kindle before my first trip to Kerala earlier this year.
I began reading it then but only made it through the opening chapters. I liked what I read, but it wasn’t until a couple of months later that I finally sat down and finished its 700-plus pages in just a week.
As I closed the book – albeit digitally – I was left with mixed feelings.
Spanning nearly eight decades, from 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is much more than the story of Big Ammachi. We first meet her as a young girl who has recently lost her father and is married at a very young age. Over the course of the novel, we witness her evolution into a stepmother, mother, widow, mother-in-law, grandmother, and ultimately the matriarch not only of her own family but also of an extended community that includes relatives, tenants, employees, and their families, and also of their village community.
At the same time, the novel chronicles India’s social history through the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. It explores caste, faith, colonialism, medicine, and the country’s gradual transformation, weaving these themes into the lives of its characters.
The novel is both multi-generational and multi-linear. Numerous storylines unfold simultaneously, each with its own cast, and crossing paths in expected and unexpected ways. Whether through career, calling, chance, or family ties, Verghese’s narrative tells how lives become intertwined across generations.
Set in Kerala – rightly called “God’s Own Country” – the novel paints a lush portrait of its rivers, villages, churches, estates, and landscapes. And so is its depiction of the lives of Indian Malayali Christians, as well as the foreigners who made India their home before and after Independence. The setting becomes a character in its own right.
The novel also deserves to be read within the context of its time. It portrays a society shaped by rigid caste hierarchies, religious divisions, poverty, limited medical care, endemic diseases, and stark inequalities of wealth. India has always been a country of contrasts and contradictions, and much of the dichotomy that exists even today is the result of its evolution through many millennia. Verghese captures these complexities with remarkable sensitivity, making them an integral part of the characters’ lives.
While I thoroughly enjoyed the novel, I did have two reservations.
First, I felt the book could have been slightly shorter. The detailed descriptions of medical conditions, surgeries, and procedures, though clearly reflecting Verghese’s expertise as a physician, occasionally interrupted the rhythm of the story. For readers without a medical background, these passages can become dense and pull attention away from the human relationships at the heart of the novel.
Second, I found the ending surprisingly abrupt. After investing in a narrative that spans more than seventy years, I wished for an epilogue set perhaps a decade later. It would have been interesting to know how the granddaughter responded after the family’s great secret was revealed, what choices she made, how her relationships evolved, and what became of the estate, the village, and the people whose lives we had followed for so long. The novel leaves many of these questions unanswered, and while that may have been intentional, I found myself wanting just a little more closure.
These are minor reservations in an otherwise great novel because of Verghese’s storytelling style. Despite its length – in pages, years, and characters – The Covenant of Water remains a breezy and an enjoyable read. Read it sitting beside a beach, or while enjoying the rains, or on a cruise watching the water, or snuggled under a blanket on a cold day – it is one of those novels that transports the reader into another world and leaves them reluctant to leave it behind.
P.S. The review started as an Instagram post, but like the novel there was much to say, hence, it needed to move to a different platform.
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